Non-Standard Game Over

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"YOU embody Jeearr; you are cursed by ten thousand generations of victims; your face adorns the idols. And worst of all, you remain awake and aware, a witness to horror, never sleeping, and never, ever to escape. Your score is -99 of a possible 400, in 805 moves. This puts you in the class of Menace to Society."

But, there are a few games that give unique sequences or even a full cutscene to particularly noteworthy player screw-ups. These are non-standard game overs.

There are a few variations on this theme:

Otherwise standard game overs (loss of hit points, lives, etc.) that receive special treatment because they occur in a particular place or time (e.g., a unique death cutscene for losing to the Final Boss);

For games where every death is accompanied by a special message, see Have a Nice Death. For games where every death has a special animation, see The Many Deaths of You. For games where all bad endings contain extended narrations or demonstrations about the consequences of your actions, see It's a Wonderful Failure.

For standard Game Overs that result from an instant-kill attack, see One-Hit Kill. For the game ending early due to a non-standard victory condition, see Instant-Win Condition.

Examples:

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Action Adventure

Alone In The Dark 1992: The normal Game Over shows a zombie dragging your dead body to the altar of Pregzt, where it shows the text "The End". Nonstandard game-overs occur if you die in or near the final boss room, get eaten by the giant plant guarding the front door, or happen to read "De Vermis Mysteriis", in which case it just says "The End" on the screen where you died.

The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask has two game over types; the standard death, and the ending that occurs if you let the moon fall on Termina. There's also an extension of the moon falling Game Over: If the guardians are called with the Oath to Order when even one of them isn't free, the free ones' attempt to stop the moon will turn out to be not working, at which point the player gets one minute (real time) left to play the Song of Time to escape. If the player opts to let time run out here, he or she will see a scene where the guardians fall over and the moon continues to fall. Then it continues to the normal scene of this Game Over variant. The Nintendo 3DSremake further extends this slightly: Whilst in the original game, "You've met with a terrible fate, haven't you?" appears on a black screen after the Moon falls, the remake adds some text telling you "And so the angry moon fell from the sky, annihilating this world and its many inhabitants", in between the moon hitting and the "terrible fate" line. The original game had some degree of ambiguity to its game over, but the remake straight up tells you that you were too slow and everyone died.

In The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, when you're travelling with a character, a Pirate tank (or ship) may invade your train. When this happens, lots of Miniblins (and later a Big Blin) will try to kidnap your passenger. If they succeed, you can still rescue the character when going to the Pirate Hideout island, so this wouldn't be a big deal. But if that place hasn't been unlocked yet (and it isn't yet by the time you're taking Carben, a plot-critical character, with you), you have no way to rescue the character, and you get an automatic Game Over.

In The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, The Imprisoned triggers this if it manages to arrive at the Sealed Temple before Link can reseal it. The Imprisoned requires Hylia's soul (read: ZELDA'S) in order to reclaim its true form and power, and it's in the temple where he can find it.

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption has one: Stay in Hyper Mode for too long, and you see a cutscene of Samus turning into Dark Samus, followed by a modified death screen.note Normally, the game over screen has a red splatter appear, presumably blood. If you get this Nonstandard screen, there's this dark blue blotch (Phazon) that grows on the screen, and the words "Terminal Corruption" appear This outcome can also happen through a different means during the travel to the Very Definitely Final Dungeon: since Samus is already on a near-terminal stage of corruption, her PED Suit vents all of the Phazon out of her body, but at the cost of any further protection, so any Phazon damage will affect a yellow bar that replaces the standard energy meter (and as time passes, the atmosphere of Phazon will slowly fill it up anyway). If this yellow bar completes, Samus will reach total corruption and the Terminal Corruption scene will trigger.

Metroid: Fusion has exactly three Non-Standard Game Overs, all of which involve a timed mission. The first occurs when the X figure out how to hack the computer and order the engines' boiler to explode; the second when an SA-X discovers and attacks a secret Metroid breeding facility; the third occurs at the very end of the game, when Samus is forced to destroy the entire space station. If you run out of time during any of these timed segments, you will see the same cutscene you'd see if you successfully completed the mission — except that you don't survive. Of course, initiating said cutscenes are Instant-Win Condition type, so you can literally wait until the last possible second.

If you take too long in Madame Carvier's apartment, the police arrest Lara and the game resets to the title screen.

Being too much of a jerkass to Bouchard during your first conversation with him will end with him pulling out a gun and shooting Lara dead on the spot.

In Tomb Raider (and loyally copied into its remake, Tomb Raider: Anniversary), if Lara makes the mistake of touching the magic hand of the Midas statue, she herself turns to solid gold, just painfully slowly enough for her to be able to realize what her mistake has cost her before she actually dies. Many players consider this to be the coolest death of the franchise.

In [PROTOTYPE], if you fail a normal mission, MISSION FAILED is displayed on the screen. If you fail the last mission, you see a nuclear bomb destroy Manhattan.

If you fail most missions in LEGO Island, the Infomaniac will simply tell you so. If you fail to catch the Brickster, though...

In Mercenary II, also known as Damocles, death is normally a slap on the wrist, since you can use a safe quit option that will resurrect you and teleport to space in a cool ship that you can fly. However, you can activate non-standard Game Overs by:

failing to prevent the comet Damocles from colliding with the planet Eris (the president of Eris will then insult you)

destroying Eris instead of Damocles (the president will ask you if you understood the mission)

destroying one of two other unrelated planets (a newsflash will report the destruction of the planet and inform you that you are now wanted by the police)

destroying the author's computer, on which the game itself supposedly runs (all planets in the system will explode one by one, and your on-board computer will question your actions, telling you to reset the game. If you do not, your on-board computer will tell you that he is surprised you haven't left yet, informing you that "THERE'S NOTHING LEFT - IT'S ALL GONE - BLOWN UP". That phrase will remain on the screen until you reset the game.)

The 2003 Bionicle game has three, two of which are in Kopaka's rail-shooter level against the Bohrok.

First, when you fight against Gahlok, if you take too long to fight him, he will reach the Kini he is heading towards and will proceed to attack it.

A rather terrifying example comes if you fail during the GCPD defense mission. You get a cutscene of Barbara and the cops in the lockup room, when suddenly the elevator opens and a minigunner starts firing, complete with audible screams.

During the final battle in God of War, Kratos is hurled back to the moment his family died by his hand, only to find them alive... whereupon Ares conjures up an army of Kratos clones. The family has their own health bar in the following battle; should it run out, a cutscene starts, showing Kratos collapsing in abject despair and sorrow, murmuring, "Not again..." The Kratos clones then gang up and chop him apart.

During one of the last battles in God of War II, Kratos is hurled back to the moment that he defeated Ares. The boss, Atropos, was going to destroy the giant sword you originally used in the first game to slay the god of war, which would lead to your retroactive death. If you failed to defeat Atropos before she could destroy the sword, you get a cutscene of past Kratos kneeling in defeat and getting stabbed by Ares, which causes present Kratos to wretch in pain and fall over, dead.

In Dante's Inferno, failing the Quick Time Event with Cleopatra when she starts fondling Dante results in him being seduced and a game over. Which is only natural, seeing as he's in Hell trying to save Beatrice.

In Contra: Hard Corps, choosing to join Colonel Bahamut in one of the game's alternate routes will show an ending in which Bahamut conquers the world with the player character as his lackey. However, the player will be then taken to the Game Over screen and be asked to continue (if he has any credits left).

A mission in the later parts of Mafia II has you in a house trying to hide somewhere while hoping not to be seen by a hitman. If you decide to hide in the shower, you will be treated to an extra cutscene of the hitman shooting you through the curtains, and then you get your "You got killed"-screen. Another one will take place if you drive too recklessly while transporting a bomb, resulting in a massive fireball.

If you fail a main mission objective in Mafia III (just dying doesn't count), you're treated to a short cutscene of the FBI agent presenting the documentary in the present day. He either goes through his notes, exclaiming that "can't be how it happened," or he'll explain how Lincoln's failure brought about the end of his plans for revenge against Sal Marcarno.

In North America's release of Custom Robo, the protagonist is freely given the option to not go on the final mission near the end of the game. If you decide not to go, the protagonist's partner, Harry, will beseech him — repeatedly — to reconsider. By steadfastly refusing to go, the rest of the team will go without him. The next day, the Big Bad arrives in the city, having killed off the others, and proceeds to destroy everything. And Harry chastises you for letting him die. After an ellipse, the game will return the player to the previous day where Harry insists that they all go.

In the Sega CD version of Spider-Man vs. the Kingpin, losing to the Kingpin (the final boss) results in a sad ending sequence in which the Kingpin triumphs over the defeated Spider-Man. He then lowers both Spider-Man and Mary Jane into the vat of deadly ooze, after which they are never seen again. In the Genesis version of the game, the bad ending consists of Mary Jane being lowered into a vat of acid, Spidey falling to his knees in despair, and "GAME OVER".

If you beat the final boss but fail to rescue all the animals in Rolo to the Rescue, the game tells you that it will "remain on your conscience" and "you will never truly be happy again". This is followed by the words "GAME OVER".

In Contra: Shattered Soldier, completing Stage 5 with too low a rank results in the archipelago being destroyed via Kill Sat, taking the heroes with it.

In the NES game Cowboy Kid, if the player accepts the bosses' deal to join the Mad Brothers, they will say that Sam became one of the villains who then did bad things and ended up getting hanged by the new sheriff of the town. After this, it shows the words "GAME OVER".

In the arcade game Magic Sword, choosing to accept the orb which drops when you defeat the final boss makes you the new final boss, with a caption asking who's going to save the world now.

Zone of the Enders has one that doubles as a bad ending: fail all SOS missions by getting an E rank (all building destroyed and no survivors), and Thunderheart will be abruptly and suddenly killed by an explosion shortly after he's introduced. ADA will confirm that Jehuty severing some of the colony's lifelines is what caused the explosion, and berate Leo for letting it happen. This is almost impossible to achieve unless one goes out of their way to do so, however.

In Bayonetta, Cereza gets captured by a Joy at one point. If you take too long to get to them, the Joy will fly away with Cereza in her arms, then the game over screen will show Cereza's discarded doll instead of the usual Bayonetta's corpse.

Adventure Game

The normal Game Over sequence in King's Quest VI is a very short cutscene in Hades. There are three Non-Standard Game Overs: a Deader Than DeadGame Over (Alexander's skeleton in tattered clothing collapses on a black background), a Baleful PolymorphGame Over ("Was that the beast you could do?"), and another non-deadly Game Over where Alexander gets captured and locked in the castle dungeon right before the wedding ("'Tis a noble thing to have a means of escape, and 'tis a far, far better thing to never get caught at all!")

King's Quest IV had a couple. Rosella could, in theory, complete all the victory conditions...except getting the magic fruit she came to get for the ailing Graham. What plays is most of the happy ending, but when she gets to Daventry, she has to admit failure and watch her father die. Another one was either failing to escape the tower cell or getting caught by Lolotte's guards, which ended with her forced to marry Edgar note Mind you, Rosella does marry Edgar several games later, but it prevents her from killing Lolotte, rescuing Graham and Genesta, restoring Edgar to his true form, and reuniting him with his real parents.

Shadowgate: All the myriad deaths cut to a glowing-eyed Reaper against a sunset with the caption, "It's a sad thing that your adventures have ended here!!", except (at least) jumping into a massive chasm, which brings, "The Reaper Man stands below, waiting to catch you" instead. If that doesn't seem scary, you lack the childhood trauma.

In the original Leisure Suit Larry, anything that resulted in a "normal" dead body would trigger a cut-scene of Larry's corpse being lowered into a laboratory, which then creates a new Larry to be raised to the opening scene for the soon-to-be-restarted game. (Interestingly enough, getting killed in an alley would result in one of the techs saying Larry screwed up again, but this never happened anywhere else.) More obscurely, if the player took too long to reach the end game, Larry sees the sun rising, and then shoots himself in the head in despair over stillbeing (technically) a virgin.

In an Older Than the NES example, many old text adventures (Interactive Fiction) games allow you to easily recover from death (sometimes by simply "walking out" of the afterlife, sometimes with an "undo" command) but have some exceptions where that doesn't work if you really screw up, such as by wiping yourself from existence through Temporal Paradox.

Example: The original Zork trilogy always cut to a prompt allowing you to "RESTART, RESTORE, or QUIT" upon death. The notable exception was if you died in Zork 3 while using the time machine to travel to the past — the game simply and immediately quit to the system command prompt, due to the historical paradox making your character cease to have ever existed entirely. This becomes particularly jarring for people playing the games on emulators on modern systems.

The notoriously cruelThe Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy text adventure also does this if you, as Ford Prefect, negate the events of the game by not saving Arthur Dent from the Earth's destruction in the first place. It is particularly notable for causing chaos and consternation among players by actually quitting the game in MID-SENTENCE.

Quitting the game became a less acceptable option over time at Infocom, but the Enchanter Trilogy, sequel to the Zork Trilogy, kept up the tradition of having special ways to die. In all three games, it is possible to take actions that not only cause you to fail your mission, but make the world substantially worse off than it was before. Thus, your score displayed at the game over prompt, which normally would be some score taken out of a total (100 out of 400, say) and give you a rank dependent on your score (from "Charlatan" to "Enchanter" to "Sorcerer" to "Archmage"), would instead become a score of -100 and your rank would be "Menace to Society". In the original game, Enchanter, one earned this rank for releasing a powerful Lovecraftian demon upon the land; in the sequel, Sorcerer, one earned this rank for successfully tracking down your demon-possessed mentor and allowing the demon to transfer itself to your far more powerful body; and in the finale, Spellbreaker, it was revealed that the entire plot of the game was a cunning trap and that actually succeeding in your goal would grant you this rank if you didn't see the ruse in time.

In the computer game version of Frederick Forsyth's The Fourth Protocol (in 1984), you have to uncover a Soviet plot to explode a nuclear bomb near a US Air Force base in Britain, to influence the upcoming British elections and lead to the election of an anti-NATO, anti-American, anti-nuclear, pro-Soviet government. Usually, if you take too long or don't get anywhere with the plot, you get a memo telling you you're being reassigned toThe Falkland Islands, until you get far enough. When you find the bomb you have to defuse it, and if you mess it up you are told the plan succeeded: Britain fell to the Soviets, and they started working on Europe from two fronts. But sometimes a different ending appears: the bomb leads to a limited nuclear war, destroying both sides and making the northern hemisphere uninhabitable. This comes "From the annals of the Australio-Indonesian Empire..."

Failure during the finale of any Quest for Glory installment from Trial by Fire through Dragon Fire will lead not only to the hero's death, but a scene of the resident Sealed Evil in a Can breaking free to lay waste to the world.

This can happen several times in the second game, Trial by Fire. The main city is beset by four elementals over the course of the story, and three days after they individually show up, if they haven't been defeated, then you get a cutscene of them destroying the city. In addition, the final portion of the game, after the Big Bad gets the sealed evil but before it is released, any failure or waste of time will result in the above mentioned non-standard game over.

In the third game, the Fighter must become initiated into the Simbani tribe as part of the plot, and this means competing against your new friend and the chief's son Yesufu at the Initiation Ceremony. The competition includes a number of events, including running, which Yesufu will always automatically beat you at until a pre-scripted moment where he is injured. If you leave him there, the Simbani, who rely on complete trust and cooperation within the tribe to survive in a harsh environment, will be horrified by your selfishness and refuse to initiate you, leading to a game over.

The Interactive Fiction Game, Anchorhead, has a large number of grisly ways to die, but the character can go insane in true Call of Cthulhu fashion by either fully reading the black tome in the church or by attacking and killing your husband during the game's finale. The character can also suffer "Endless Torment" by being sucked into the womb at any point.

Return To Zork: In most deaths, a three-note song plays (the notes are from the game's opening theme), an evil guy laughs at you, and a temple screen is shown. However:

In the very first death of the game (getting attacked by a vulture), a longer song plays.

In any death relating to water, a different three-note song plays.

In any death relating to explosions, there is no song and no evil laugh.

In one death (walking over a pile of leaves and getting sprung in a trap that also turns you upside-down), the temple screen is also upside-down.

Two final special game overs, related to the Copyright Protection quizzes. One just exits out to DOS normally if you get the questions wrong, but in the other one, later on in the game, you are "blown" back to DOS by a double barrel hunting shotgun.

Typing "click heels" in the old The Wonderful Wizard of Oz text adventure would lead to a black screen and state that while it did get Dorothy home safely, it leaves her friends fending for themselves, and that Dorothy will spend the rest of her life wondering about the adventures she missed out on.

In Myst, if you try to enter either the red book or the blue book, the brother inside will keep you trapped inside the book by tearing out all the pages. If you enter the green book without the final page, you're trapped. In the nice ending, you put the white pages into the green book with Atrus in it. Then you get to wander the entire game world as a reward. Other entries in the series also offer multiple endings.

Normal game overs in Ghost Trick are caused by being unable to save your subject's life before time runs out. However, there are two instances where you can actively cause the subject's death.

If you recline the seat while the van-driver is driving, he will lose control of the vehicle and crash anyway.

If you replace the bullet with the hard-hat, rather than the soft knit hat, it will still crash into Cabanela's face and crush his skull (even more brutally than the bullet would have). His ghost isn't very pleased, but it's hilarious to watch.

Another instance (in the same chapter as the second example) occurs if you try manipulating objects in view of the killer.

In the video game version of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, you play most of the game as King Arthur, but the "Knights in Kombat" mini-game allows you to play as Arthur or the Black Knight. If you play as the Black Knight and win, the game immediately cuts to the Game Over screen.

the white chamber has a full eight endings. Four are standard Have a Nice Death you get by getting killed before completing the story (end up in outer space, get electrocuted, die from toxic air, or decide to stay in a quarantine bay until you expire). Completing the story nets you an ending depending on how many points you've gained by certain deeds until then: five points nets you the Redemption ending, in which you leave the station. Less, you get the Damned ending in which you have to do everything all over again since you didn't learn. Zero points nets you the Tormented ending, in which you're essentially dumped into HELL. Oh, and scoring six points (difficult unless you go out of your way to do everything right) lands the Comedy ending, which is weird.

In one of Homestuck's flash "walkarounds" (Past Karkat: Wake Up), Karkat specifically tells you not to fall asleep — that doing so would be fatal, given the dream worlds' annihilation. Later on, Nepeta shows you to an Easter Egg room with a bed and lots of treasure chests. Guess what you can do.

At the end of Beneath a Steel Sky, you can get one either by having Rob voluntarily plug himself into LINC, or waiting until LINC itself grabs him. Rob struggles for a while, then has his mind wiped and replaced with that of LINC.

All of the endings in the Atlantis series are non-standard, and depend entirely on what wrong choice you made to bring them about.

In Sword Of Shannara if you attack the Warlock Lord instead of the book controlling him, you get a text-only ending where the main character is the new Warlock Lord.

Trying to enable cheat codes in The Stanley Parable results in Stanley being trapped in "the serious room", leaving the player no choice but to restore or restart.

In The Dead Case, shortly before the very last part of the game, the killer runs into the house of the protagonist's fiance, pursued by the ghost of his wife. The dead wife goes to set the house on fire, and the player is given the choice between stopping her and letting her go ahead. The correct option is to stop her (which will lead to the two going inside the house, stopping the killer, and saving the fiance), but letting the ghost burn the house down will result in a game over, informing the player that the fiance died and the killer escaped.

Losing to Shadow Man will cause Shadow Man to kill Mega Man off screen, and give out a Evil Laugh.

Losing to Gemini Man will cause Gemini Man to comment on Mega Man's loss before finishing off Mega Man with his Gemini Laser and giving out a Evil Laugh. The screen fades to black with no option of continuing.

Losing to the final boss will cause a Game Over where Ra-Moon kills everyone and takes over the world. There is a option to retry the final boss, luckily.

Another example from Zork. If you are in the forest, in just the right spot, and throw the knife or golden egg at a tree, it bounces back, hitting you in the face and killing you instantly. The game then tells you that you seem like a good guy so it will give you another chance and automatically restarts for you. You then appear, alive, in the forest, right where you were before, but without any of your belongings. In front of you, whatever you used to kill yourself will be right in front of you. You pick it up, throw it at the tree again, it hits you in the face again, killing you again. The third or fourth time you do this - or kill yourself in any way three or four times in a row - the game gives you the message "You are obviously unstable" and gives you the game over message.

Beat 'em Up

Fable Heroes normally does not allow the player to lose; even if all Player Characters in the party are killed, they can complete the level as ghosts, receiving fewer resources. The normal end screen shows the party members standing on a championship platform. However, if the game is set to the highest difficulty level and all the PCs die, the game cuts to the same platform but with all of the top 3 spaces occupied by monsters, with the heading "The Creatures Win!"

In Undercover Cops, failing to stop Dr. Crayborn from dropping the atomic bomb on the city will result in a bad ending in which the city is destroyed by the bomb and the three city sweepers are forced to quit their jobs, followed by the Game Over screen.

In Anarchy Reigns, during the boss fight against the Blacker Baron, once you weaken him to about 25% of his life, you'll be warned of an impending plane crash on your position. After weakening him further, you'll then have about 20 seconds to finish the fight, or else the plane will crash, killing you both and causing a Mission Failure.

Fighting Game

In the arcade version of Street Fighter Alpha 3, losing the final CPU match against M. Bison does not allow you to continue. Instead, you'll get an alternate ending in which M. Bison uses your character's body as an energy source for his Psycho Drive. And if you lose to Ryu playing as M. Bison, it will play Ryu's ending instead.

Normally, losing a fight in the first Fatal Fury leads to a taunting quote from your opponent and a "Continue?" screen showing your fighter's battered picture. Losing to Geese, the last boss, however, gives you a cutscene where he kicks you off of Geese Tower. The "Continue?" screen likewise shows your character plummeting to his death.

Given that using a Continue would place you back at the same battle again, one imagines a giant trampoline placed directly under the window...

In Marvel vs. Capcom 3, you can watch a unique ending sequence if you lose to the final boss and opt not to continue. In Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3, said ending became unlockable by beating the newly added Galactus Mode.

In Bushido Blade, you must fight your opponents honorably in Story mode. Use dishonorable tactics and the game abruptly ends after a certain point, with a usually random message berating you, such as "None are more contemptible than those who defile the way of the Bushido."

In the Arcana Heart series, should you time out during the final boss battles, the bad endings show either the Elemental World and human world merging in the first game or Japan getting destroyed by Ragnarok in the third.

In the original Virtual-ON and the sequel Oratorio Tangram, attempting to defeat the final boss by time over will result in a bad ending (due to a Wave Motion Gun on the moon powering up in the first game, or a Reality Warper super-computer activating in the sequel).

In the Virtual Boy game Teleroboxer, there is a "Title Defense" mode which can only be played if you defeat all of your robot opponents, including the "Legendary Champ". If you lose even one match in the "Title Defense" mode, it will say that you are no longer the champion and you must now retire. Depending on which save file that you played on, it will say "CHAMPION RETIRED" on it, which means you cannot play on that same save file ever again.

First Person Shooter

In Time Shift, if you block or otherwise interfere with certain movable objects while using your Time Reversal power, you get a non-standard Game Over due to Time Paradox.

System Shock's normal game over is you serving SHODAN well, as a cyborg. You get a non-standard game over when you fire the mining laser into Earth. The game ends with a frantic Cyberspace battle where the player crashes an AI who in turn hacks the player's mind. The latter is represented by a storm of pixels slowly filling the screen. If the AI wins, the pixels fill the screen to form a picture of her empty, emotionless, Gigeresque face.

If you die in Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, you will usually just watch Kyle die in a slow motion sequence. However on one level, you are required to be stealthy. If an enemy raises the alarm, you will see a cutscene of Kyle in prison just before being tortured.

If you shoot an instructor, the screen goes black and then transports your character to a prison cell in Leavenworth.

If you shoot people on your own team too many times in online play, the game will kick you out of the server and give you the Leavenworth scene as well.

Half-Life has several of these, usually taking the form of a black screen with white text:

When using the teleporter "gun" in Opposing Force, there are places where you can translocate into nothingness, giving you an unusual Game Over screen.

And if you try to chase Freeman to Xen, you will lose due to creating a Temporal Paradox.

And similar to the America's Army example above, you can attack/kill an instructor during the tutorial and get yourself court-martialed.

In the Opposing Force Chapter "Friendly Fire", you can damage the rocket the nuke that will eventually blow up Black Mesa came in, to the point where it explodes!

Similar to the Opposing Force tutorial example mentioned above, this can also occur at the start of Blue Shift before you officially report for duty. You're given a pistol at the practice-firing range, loads of comrade security guards are around, no need to guess what happens if you decide to shoot someone.

Refusing the G-Man's offer at the end of Half-Life might be a case of this, or a case of Multiple Endings. He expresses his regrets, and then it's not pretty.

There's also a much earlier Half-Life non-standard game over during the Questionable Ethics level where you need to bring one of the three hiding scientists to the eye scanner to unlock the front door of the building. If you decide to kill all three of the scientists, get them killed by the malfunctioning surgery saws, or otherwise let them die before the door is unlocked, you end up trapping yourself. The game will then fade out like the G-Man endings after the last remaining scientist dies.

In Half-Life 2, crashing a vehicle into a location that the player will not be able to recover will result in you getting terminated for "failure to preserve mission-critical resources".

Jumping off the cliffs on Highway 17 will fade to black with the note that you "demonstrated exceedingly poor judgement".

In Episode Two, the G-Man's endgame reports have been replaced with Vortessent messages, the most amusing of which comments that "the Magnusson's misgivings about the Freeman were completely justified" if the player fails to protect the base.

In Red Faction, if Griffin dies, you will get a special message saying "Your failure to protect Griffin doomed the rebellion, etc'', followed by just "Game Over" instead of "You Have Died". A similar thing happens if Capek kills Eos during his boss battle.

In Red Faction: Guerilla. if you kill your brother during the tutorial, the Game Over screen will appear, saying "WTF, you killed your Brother!!!". Yes, with that wording.

In Tron 2.0, if you kill any non-hostile and/or "Civilian" Programs (like Ma3a, Byte, or any character that you can talk to), you hear a voice say "Illegal program termination." Five seconds later, you get a screen with the same message.

If Ma3a is killed during her Protection Missions or a stray shot takes out Alan when you're running your Escort Mission with him in the latter part of the game, the message is "You failed to protect Ma3a / your father." Ma3a proves difficult to defend; Alan (being possibly the most rational character in that universe) has the good sense to duck when the discs start flying.

In the final mission of Target Terror, if you directly shoot the final terrorist instead of the Dead Man Switch he's holding, the plane blows up. If you run out of lives during the "no continues" part of the mission, the plane is shown crashing into the White House.

Call of Duty: "You are a traitor to the motherland!" if you kill a Commissar in the Russian campaign, "Friendly fire will not be tolerated", if you shoot a friendly elsewhere, or "You were killed by a grenade, exploding vehicle, lethal pocket of radiation, etc."

In Modern Warfare 2, in the early mission "Team Player", if the player chooses to run in on foot rather than go into the convoy, you are promptly taken down by sniper fire with the notice "It would probably be safer to ride in the convoy."

Failing to move past certain events in recent installments will replace the quotes with whatever you are supposed to do. One is reminded to "Hold on for dear life" after falling to death while ice climbing.

Dying to an attack dog in Modern Warfare or a Banzai charger in World at War has the game tell you when to press the melee button/key to save yourself.

In Call of Duty 2, there are two instances, one in "Red Army Training", and one (appropriately enough) in "Prisoners of War", where the game will display the message "Killing prisoners of war will not be tolerated" if the player attacks captured German soldiers.

Operation Wolf: Aside from "sustaining a lethal injury", the game will also end if you run out of bullets and grenades ("Since you have no ammunition left, you must join the hostages."). Strangely enough, you still have to run out of health before that happens.

If Captain Keyes dies in the mission "Truth and Reconciliation", where you have to rescue him, the camera cuts to him falling, and Cortana says "No! Without the Captain, the Covenant have already won".

If you run out of time during the Escape Sequence on the final level, the game displays a cutscene of the Pillar Of Autumn exploding with you still onboard.

Typically one can friendly fire your fellow marines and still complete the level even if they turn on you and try to kill you. The ONE exception to this is if you kill one of the bridge crew on the first level, "The Pillar Of Autumn". Doing this causes the room exit to be locked and invincible marines to attack you. You can't complete the level and you WILL die eventually.

Completing or refusing certain missions results in an Unwinnable ending of being gunned down by a countless wave of Acolytes.

The first Soldier of Fortune has a number of these for failed mission objectives, such as running out of time to stop the missile launch in Siberia.

In the first Stealth-Based Mission of Soldier of Fortune II, if a guard spots you, Dr. Ivanovich is immediately captured and you get a slightly different Game Over screen. In the level where you are escorting a team of soldiers, disobeying orders or accidentally shooting one of them results in them executing you on the spot.

In the original Time Crisis, running out of time caused an instant game over, unlike the sequels.

Left 4 Dead has a non-standard game over in the finale of The Sacrifice. There has to be a minimum of 2 survivors alive to perform the sacrifice; one survivor has to jump off the bridge and restart the generator to get the bridge up and the other survivor has to be on the bridge to get away from the zombies once it is raised. If 3 survivors are killed or are incapacitated on the bridge and the survivor sacrificing themselves is off the bridge, it counts as a failure and you will have to redo the finale. This is coming from a game where the only way to lose is everyone dying.

Quake IV has a Nonstandard Game Over that can be activated at two distinct points, both of those points happening when an ally you're supposed to protect is killed.

Usually in SWAT 3 and SWAT 4, failing objectives does not end the entire mission in failure, with Mission Control instead asking if you want to continue and try to salvage what you can of the mission. A few missions, however, have objectives that, if failed, result in an immediate game over (i.e., letting the plane take off in SWAT 3's "Rapid Deployment, Airport" mission), complete with an FMV showing what happens afterwards.

In Return to Castle Wolfenstein, in the Rocket Base mission, there is a German operator counting down the time left before the rocket you have to destroy will take off. If you fail to destroy the rocket in time, the game will fade to black as the rocket takes off and you will have to start again.

Nosferatu The Wrath Of Malachi: If you get killed by the Count or Malachi, you get a special cutscene saying that you were the last sacrifice needed to restore Malachi's powers, and now you will be absorbed into him as he is released to destroy the world.

Far Cry 4 has one right at the start of the game. If you do what the horrifying, Affably Evil psychopath Pagan Min says and simply wait around until he comes back, he returns and starts up a pleasant conversation about Ajay's mother, revealing several key plot points in the process, then puts Ajay on a helicopter and takes him to Lakshmana so he can honour his mother's dying wish, then rounds up by asking Ajay if he wants to go do something fun before the credits roll. Probably one of the most egregious, anti-climatic, and humorous examples of We Could Have Avoided All This in modern fiction.

Light Gun Game

Zorton Brothers has an example of this; besides the undertaker burying you if you lose all of your lives, the fight against the Zorton Brothers is this; you only have two bullets to kill the Zorton Brothers. If you miss a single bullet, you will be shot, and you will be treated to a scene with the undertaker commenting on your loss against the Zorton Brothers. Afterwards, your remaining lives are ignored, and you do not get to continue, meaning that it's back to the beginning of the game for you.

H-Game

RPG eroge made by Eushully tend to have this. Even losing in battles that should be somewhat easy will result in a slightly extended ending. For example, losing against an assassin in Reiki has the main character talk with said assassin before going to the game over screen.

Typical H-Game fandom has a GOR (Game Over Rape) subgenre, which is all about this trope.

This is typically averted in Corruption Of Champions, where no matter how badly you've gotten your ass kicked by an enemy you are guaranteed to "come to your senses in 8 hours, missing some gems". Most players die their first time by abusing transformation items which if used too much can leave you as a wild horse or a mindless puddle of slime to name a couple, though it is actually possible to get a Game Over by losing to enemies during specific scenarios.

MMORPG

In World of Warcraft, a Total Party Kill during the Madness of Deathwing encounter will result in him activating the titular ability "Cataclysm". Doing so causes the entire screen to temporarily go black as he just destroyed the planet.

The same thing used to happen if the countdown ran out for Algalon the Raid Destroyer, for the same reason.

In EVE Online, getting your ship destroyed or running out of scan probes in wormhole space after the wormhole you use to get there collapses results in you becoming stranded in an unknown solar system. It's not technically a 'game over' since you can hire other pilots to come find and rescue you, but if nobody does, it is.

In Getter Love!!, the game normally ends when you or one of your opponents declares your love to one of the girls. If someone other than you wins the game, you're treated to a word from everyone involved, and that's it. If two game-weeks pass by and no one wins, you'll be treated to a scene where Reika, fucking, MARRIES YOU, as her equally butt-ugly family attends her wedding ceremony.

Pinball

Many older pinball machines had a mechanism to detect dishonest players trying to cheat the machine's coin mechanism into thinking a coin had been inserted when it actually hadn't, or trying to steal the coin box outright. If triggered, the machine displays "SLAM TILT" (not to be confused with the regular TILT) and all players get a Non-Standard Game Over, plus any credits left in the machine are voided (newer games 80's and on don't void credits). However, modern pinball machines usually don't even have Slam Tilt switches, since modern coin mechanisms aren't vulnerable to the old exploits that Slam Tilt guards against.

Operation: Thunder is infamous for abruptly ending the game if the player successfully completes all eleven missions and completes the Final Assault. Fortunately, this is an operator-adjustable setting, and most home collectors simply turn it off for longer playtimes.

Conker's Bad Fur Day involves a fabled Panther King seeking a red squirrel with which to replace his broken table leg, so as to prevent him from spilling his milk on said table. The standard game over has Conker, the protagonist, tied and gagged to the king's table leg. Depending on the circumstances of the player's death, the game's nonstandard endings include the Panther King's minions turning Conker in as either a bag of soggy squirrel (drowning or otherwise dying underwater), bloodied chunks (gibbed), or black char (burned or electrocuted), or just a shot of Conker's Face on a Milk Carton (falling down a bottomless pit). In the final stage of the game (after the Panther King dies), they do away with the cutscene entirely, only showing you "GAME OVER" on a black screen.

In the first two Banjo-Kazooie games, as well as Donkey Kong 64, just quitting the game triggers a Game Over banner, as if the developers of the games (Rare) wanted the player to beat the whole campaigns in one session. In both DK64 and the first BK, the Game Over includes a scene showing the potential outcome that would result if the protagonists failed to twart the plans of the villains; like in Conker's Bad Fur Day, however, once the player gets past the foil of the evil plans, and all that remains is the final battle, no scene is shown, as the game just puts the Game Over banner before returning to the title screen (this is also true for the entirety of Banjo-Tooie, which doesn't have any Game Over cutscenes whatsoever).

In Castlevania: Rondo of Blood, normally Richter dies in a Rain of Blood (being the first Castlevania protagonist to suffer this), but getting ambushed by a living portrait ends up with Richter being trapped in a picture within the picture — which the figure in the portrait proceeds to tear up. It's the only unique death animation in the game. That said, this isn't really a Game Over (unless you were on your last life).

Losing to the True Final Boss in Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow results in Soma being taken over by Dracula completely, and you get a short scene where Julius Belmont is implied to make good on the I Cannot Self-Terminate promise he made with Soma earlier. The DS sequel one-ups this even more: getting the Non-Standard Game Over unlocks a new game mode where the other characters team up to take down the now Face Heel Turned protagonist.

Rayman 2 has exactly one of these. There's a quest in which you have to locate a healing elixir in the Cave of Bad Dreams. After completing the cave's obstacle course, you are offered massive sums of cash. If you accept this, you will find yourself sitting on a luxury yacht with a pile of cash the size of a small building. The implication is that Rayman lets his greed get the best of him and decides to simply let the pirates enslave everybody while he lies around enjoying his money. The game snaps you back immediately instead of ending the game though, and will cycle through until you pick the right option. In some ports of the game, Rayman just takes the potion automatically, though.

After the standard Critical Existence Failure, the gameover screen reads "You have died. Would you like to try again?" If your Oxygen Meter runs out underwater, the screen changes to "You have drowned." If you fall into either of the two Bottomless Pits in the game, it reads "You were never seen again..."

The worst of the game's Multiple Endings borders on a non-standard game over. Notably, the music that plays ("Hero's End") is different from that in the better endings ("The Way Back Home"), and this is the only ending that lacks the ending credits.

Inverted in The New Zealand Story. If, after clearing World 1, you lose your last life by getting hit by an arrow (or similar) attack, instead of the standard game over screen, you instead go to "heaven", and have a chance to escape in order to continue the game. If you make it to the end of this "hidden" stage, however, the game ends for real. You have to find a hidden exit in order to get out of this "nonstandard" game over. Escape and you have one last chance. Lose that, and you're taken to Hell for another Nonstandard Game Over.

In Drawn to Life, you can choose not to help the Raposas. Mari, the only one hearing from "you" at that point, loses hope, and the game ends.

In Mario's Time Machine, if you either lose all of your lives or run out of time rescuing all of the artifacts from Bowser, then the game will show a cutscene where Bowser successfully activates his time machine and escapes to a tropical island. If you rescue all of the artifacts but get them back in the wrong time period, then Bowser's time machine will overload, and as a result he is sent back to the Cretaceous period all dazed and confused-looking. If you get everything right, then Bowser's time machine will still overload, and as a result he is sent back to the Cretaceous again, only to be crushed to death by a giant dinosaur foot.

In the second episode (game) of Commander Keen, there are Tantalus Ray Cannons you must destroy in order to save Earth. There are eight of them, but if you press a switch on the side of any of them, a Tantalus Ray shot will destroy the planet and your game is over instantly.

In the arcade game Elevator Action II (Elevator Action Returns in Japan), if you run out of time near the end of the final stage (the nuclear missile silo), the missile will be launched and a picture of an erupting mushroom cloud is shown, followed by a message on the computer screen that says "YOUR MISSION IS OVER".

In the Oddworld series, there are horrible consequences if you fail to complete the in-game tasks to a high enough standard. In Abe's Oddysee, if you fail to save over 50 Mudokons, Abe will be sliced and diced through a meat saw in Rupture Farms. In Abe's Exoddus, again, failing to save enough Mudokons, will leave Abe in the hands of the Brewmaster, who will strap him down and pass electricity through his body to extract his tears. Eventually, the electricity gets turned up too high and he will be electrocuted. In Munch's Oddysee, failing to obtain a certain level of Quarma will leave both Munch and Abe to be mauled by Fuzzles, who also alert the Vykkers as to their whereabouts. Abe will be killed and his head hung on a wall. Munch has an even worse fate. He is strapped down, while his lungs are forcibly removed while he is still fully conscious so that they can be given to the ailing Glukkon queen.

The Famicom Star Wars game had a cutscene of the Death Star destroying Yavin IV if you ran out of lives on the last level.

The Sega game adaptation of Tom & Jerry: The Movie has one where, if Tom is idle for too long, Jerry simply runs off the screen, taking you to the Game Over/Continue screen.

The indie PC game Iji includes a specific death sequence for being slain through overkill. Ordinary deaths in the game, through small arms fire, electric shock, or even a nuclear explosion, result in the protagonist shrieking, flying backwards, and exploding, cracking the camera as the game over screen plays. However, getting killed by the ultimate attack of the final boss, who wields a Phantom Hammer, normally mounted on space ships to exterminate all life on a planet, instead results in Iji being obliterated before she can scream, wiping her stats to zero, with nothing but silence left where she once stood.

In Mystery Quest, losing all of your Hit Points gave you a normal Game Over screen with Hao standing in place and crying. However, if he should die by jumping into deep water without an SOS raft, the Game Over screen will show Hao crying against a watery background while displaying the words "Hao Can Not Swim; Game Over".

If, on the Fastest Finger portion of the game, no one gets it right after several attempts, Regis Philbin comes on, mocks you for being stupid, and says "That's it, I'm out of here." Then the game quits.

This also happens as early as the select mode screen. note It gives you the option of either going straight to the game or playing Fastest Finger first. If you do nothing, Regis will make a comment once every few seconds, growing increasingly impatient each time, before he finally throws in the towel and quits the game for you, kicking you back to your desktop.

In almost all You Don't Know Jack games, the following will happen when the contestants respond with "fuck you" on Gibberish Questions three times in a single game: the first time, you lose a very large sum of money, and depending on the mood, the host will take even more and possibly even rename you into something insulting. The second time, nothing happens to the score because he doesn't find it funny or creative enough to warrant the punishment a second time. The third time, he just gives up and closes the game, and he'll make it known you can't pause or press a key to get out of this if you tried.

Antichamber: Killing yourself in-game (namely by crushing yourself with blocks) will crash the game engine.

LIT gives you a unique punishment if you use too much electricity at one time; the generator breaks and the screen undergoes a Fade to White, leaving Jake and Rachael at the mercy of the creatures in the darkness.

Racing Game

In Vette, if you don't answer the Copy Protection question correctly, after a few minutes, the game displays the message "You are driving a stolen Vette" and quits.

Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune series lets you have this by driving the cars into wrong way, but it is possible only if you aren't playing Story Mode nor Multiplayer Battle, and you have the Retire Option turned on on your game save in your card.

The game has two kinds of Game Over: the normal defeat, when your opponent simply wins, and the Armageddon defeat, which happens if you drop too many nukes, and basically means everybody loses. Similarly, the Cold War campaign has two Game Overs: the normal defeat, where the opposing side wins, and the Nuclear Holocaust ending, where everybody fires Mnogo Nukes.

Theatre Europe. Notably, you can't win as Warsaw Pact under the hardest difficulty, as NATO will, as a desperate measure, launch a major nuclear attack against you, leading to an End of the World as We Know It.note Oddly, this tracks actual historical NATO and Soviet doctrine: the US and NATO merely had a no-offensive-use policy—that is, we'll use nukes first, but only if they attacked conventionally first—but not a no-first-use policy. The US and NATO several times considered and rejected proposals to move to no-first-use (most recently in 1999 on a motion by Germany). In contrast, the USSR actually did have a no-first-use policy from time to time (although they never announced it). This shows in their respective targeting: US missiles were targeted counterforce (aimed at known Soviet missile sites) while Soviet missiles were targeted countervalue (aimed at US and other NATO cities and sites of economic value). (Conversely, when playing as NATO, your goal is to defend yourself for a requisite number of turns; if you ever enter the Warsaw Pact territory, the enemy will start a global nuclear war. You can also trigger it deliberately, or by provoking the enemy by launching one too many nuclear missiles against them.)

The old MS-DOS Real-Time Strategy game Command HQ features a nonstandard game over by nuclear winter. Normally, allowing your capital to be overrun results in the status bar stating "We captured the enemy's capital!" or "The enemy captured our capital!", along with a catchy tune and a bit of flashing. However, if you use too many nuclear strikes in a scenario, it exits straight to DOS with the message "SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MUNDI" (Latin for "Thus passes the glory of the world.")

Failing the storyline stage battles in Brütal Legend leads to a Type A cutscene where they gloat over you.

Battle Zone 1998 includes several missions that avert Take Your Time despite the absence of a mission timer. On Mars, General Collins orders you to scan Cthonian ruins for a flight data log; continue to ignore his orders, and he will transfer Grizzly One's command to Lieutenant Corbin before ordering Grizzly One to be court-martialed.

After brainwashing Tea, Scott Irvine makes her attempt a forbidden spell that will destroy the world, with herself as the tribute for it. If you wait until the mission timer runs out, she succeeds.

If you win the second brainwashed Joey fight with anyone but Mai, he fails to break free of the mind control. Scott sets him up to sacrifice himself via a hypnotic suggestion, and Yugi and friends can't even take revenge on Scott since he appears as a hologram.

Your second encounter with Yami Bakura has him threatening to burn Jakhud to the ground. If you fail to stop him from reaching the city, he does burn it down, and you get a special cutscene of Fizdis crying out for her parents.

The first game has a slightly different Game Over screen for its hardest song, "Pandemonium." After the usual "LIFE DEPLETED/ROUND FAILED" screens, a skull appears afterwards.

In the Groove 2 features something similar if you fail "Vertex^2," you get the usual "LIFE DEPLETED/ROUND FAILED" screens, and then a power of two pops up next to "FAILED," turning it into "ROUND FAILED^2."

Rhythm Heaven (GBA/AC) and Rhythm Heaven Fever offer two ways to fail "Night Walk": Either fail to hit enough notes, which is the "standard" way, or fall into a Bottomless Pit.

You fell in a hole.

Reflec Beat typically lets the current song run to the end, unless you are playing the iOS port, in which you can pause the game and quit or restart the current song. However, in Reflec Beat colette -All Seasons-, the Pastel Wonder Traveler event puts you on a Life Meter, which decreases whenever you get a Good or a Miss. If your HP hits zero, the song ends immediately in failure.

Normally, a Game Over in beatmania IIDX results from finishing a song with less than 80% Groove Gauge. However, if you miss 50 notes in a row, or have one of several different "survival" gauges and that gauge hits 0%, the "STAGE FAILED" shutters—which never pop up on a "finish with <80%" fail—will pop up and the song will immediately end.

Roguelike

Rogue: "R.I.P.: Software Pirate. Killed by Copy Protection Mafia.", if you die while playing an illegal copy.

In Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity, you can actually refuse to come back to the Pokémon world after your partner makes it possible with a wish. This results in being sent back to the main menu after a brief narration that you never returned and were missed terribly by your friends, and upon loading your save, the game will treat it as though you had been defeated in the dungeon prior to the event.

868-Hack will give you a special death cause if you manage to make yourself stuck with no possible move.

While dying in weird ways is pretty standard in ADOM, there's also the non-dying way to end the game by having your character just walk off the game map by the same path they took to get in, never to return. It's definitely the easiest way to avoid actually dying, aside from the fact that the backstory implies the forces of Chaos will then probably consume the world.

In The Awakened Fate Ultimatum, if you choose to have Shin not try to save Eri after she is kidnapped by devils, he receives a package containing her severed head. This causes him to go full monster, killing everyone around him, destroying Celestia and then the devils that come to investigate the carnage. You are then dumped to the game's title screen.

Role Playing Game

Gateway To The Savage Frontier, an old Gold Box Dungeons and Dragons RPG, has a stone statue offer you a reward to give it the statuettes you are collecting. If you accept, it gives you all the gold in the vault and you are immediately captured by the Zhentarim (the chief bad guys) and enslaved.

Tales of Destiny offers a unique example: if you manage to defeat Leon when he attempts to arrest you (a task requiring either cheats or insane amounts of early-game level grinding), you are treated to a positive Non-Standard Game Over Screen, in which your budding party goes on to have zany adventures apparently unrelated to the ones the plot intended for them to have. Presumably, said zany adventures only last as long as it takes for the Big Bad to execute his plans and destroy the world, but the Non-Standard Game Over does not address this little issue.

Romancing SaGa 2 had several; If you fail the Komulune Island mission and allow the volcano to erupt, or perform the South Sea Mermaid quest. These will only happen as last emperor, though.

In Romancing SaGa 3, if you die during the battle with the final boss, you get to watch it cause an explosive chain reaction that destroys the entire universe. It even destroys the depiction of the world map (on an actual map) that is floating in space when you access it. It blows up if you beat the game, too, but gets better.

In A Dance with Rogues, your character is subject to two loyalty tests in the middle of the first chapter. Failing either of them (selling the thieves' guild to the man in the Mysterious Note quest or going off north instead of returning to Betancuria in Lesson 7) causes the game to end and the standard credits to roll. Also, if you refuse to summon Hyath but keep the ring, you get a dreamscape cutscene and you die as soon as you leave the Summer Isles.

In Covenant, the party can enter the Bonus Dungeon, Black Forest. It's a maze where you're guided by talking flowers. Yes, talking flowers. The white flowers always tell the truth, and generally give you clues about how to get through the dungeon. However, near the end, a white flower tells you how to "proceed deeper into the forest." If you follow its advice, your characters get lost in the forest forever (complete with a creepy message) and thus, Game Over.

In Koudelka, failing to obtain a certain object before fighting the final boss will result in a gruesome cutscene rather than the standard Game Over screen. Also, if you lose the fight with the final boss, you're shown the "sad" ending, which is actually longer than the "happy" one.

If you lose to Lavos, you get to watch him destroy the world. The text "But the future refused to change..." then appears.

In the DS version, if you lose to the Bonus BossDream Devourer, Schala says she will erase all existence, and then you see the "In the end, the future refused to change" screen.

Losing to Magus in 600 AD (who is no pushover) will treat you to a very short scene in which he turns around and continues summoning. And, before the screen fades to black, Lavos's great scream is the last thing you hear.

In Pokémon Ranger: Shadows of Almia, there's a timed mission in which you have to close a massive valve to prevent the Cargo Ship from sinking with you, Barlow, and all the Pokémon. If time runs out, you will see a cutscene of the ship sinking to the bottom of the ocean. This is the first time in the games where the player can die.

In the Origins version of Final Fantasy II, if you somehow manage to beat the opening battle against the Black Knights, the game simply takes you back to the start menu.

There are two in Final Fantasy III: If you try to cross the swamp in front of the Goldor Manor WITHOUT the Levigrass Shoes, your party sinks into the swamp. Also, if you try to pass the statues without collecting ALL of the Fangs, your party members are instantly killed by an unseen force.

"The party has met an untimely end."

Final Fantasy V has one in the Fork Tower, which houses both the Flare and Holy magic in separate towers. Both magic spells have to be picked up in tandem or else the tower will explode. While the boss fights that precede getting each spell don't have time limits, you only have a few seconds after getting the Holy spell for the other team to grab the Flare spell and start their boss fight before everything blows up and you're kicked back to the title screen.

The game has the famous opera scene that Celes takes the lead in. As she sings her lines, you have to choose the next set of lines for her to sing, and if you choose the wrong set, she botches the play. If you screw up 4 times, the game mocks you for failing and you get a game over.

In the World of Ruin, after meeting Sabin in Tzen, failing to save the child from the building within the time limit causes the house to collapse with Celes still inside.

In Final Fantasy VII, if you don't get out of the reactor in the opening mission before it blows up, it simply blows up with you inside it.

Failing to complete either the Fire Cavern dungeon or the escape from Dollet before the expiration of the time limit imposed in those missions will result in a Game Over.

When escaping the D-District Prison, there's a scene where you have to walk Squall across a bridge. If he falls off the bridge, the game ends immediately.

At the Missile Base, failure to alter the coordinates of several missiles results in a scene where your home is promptly obliterated by said missiles without even so much as a time limit. Also, the obvious Non-Standard Game Over of not taking out the boss of the dungeon before the Missile Base blows up.

Also, failing to rescue Rinoa in time leaves her floating off into space forever, and in the boss fight with Adel, she uses Rinoa as a Human Shield, draining HP to heal herself. Killing Rinoa through attacks that hit all enemies or by letting Adel drain all her HP results in game over.

It is even possible to botch the train hijacking mission early in the game and result in the two trains colliding, although you are given the choice of not taking the Game Over by retrying the mission. However, you lose the opportunity to raise your SeeD rank, and if you fail enough times, your SeeD rank will actually drop.

Same choice scenario with the paratrooper punching match in the Battle of the Gardens at the end of Disc 2, except there's no penalty for retrying. Not only that, but you have the option to try again with +200 HP and each time you fail, the game gives you a tip that could help you win that time, though some are more useful than others.

Same with the Laguna scenario when he's fighting the Ruby Dragon. If the Ruby Dragon takes all of his HP, then you can chose either "I'm done for" or "Not yet!" If you choose the former, it's a Game Over, but "Not yet!" allows you try again. There's no penalty and you can do it as many times as necessary.

There are two instant-lose conditions in Final Fantasy IX at the start of the Evil Forest section. Garnet and then Vivi get abducted by a monster, and you have to kill it to free them. During each fight, the monster sucks up Garnet and Vivi's HP, and if their HP hits zero, they die and the game ends. Also, in the fight against Black Waltz #2, it will not attack Garnet. However, if all the other party members are KO'd, it will cast Sleep on Garnet and spirit her away, ending the game.

In Final Fantasy X, if you take too long during the final fight against Sin, it will unleash its Overdrive "Giga-Graviton," which will destroy the airship you're standing on, instantly killing your party. You can't even use an Aeon to take the hit for you.

Take too long to destroy Vegnagun in the second-to-last battle in Final Fantasy X-2, and you get to watch Shuyin fire it, obliterating Spira.

Breath of Fire II has a case of a Nonstandard Game Over that's also a bad ending. A still screen depicting an army of demons taking over the world can be seen in one of two ways: either by choosing not to unseal the gate to the final dungeon, or failing to break out of the final boss's paralysis spell.

Breath of Fire III also has a case of a Nonstandard Game Over, which doubled as a bad ending. It was achieved by submitting to the final boss and relinquishing Ryu's powers instead of fighting against her.

Breath of Fire IV also has a case of a Nonstandard Game Over, which (again) doubled as a bad ending. It featured Ryu ultimately agreeing with Fou-Lu, merging with him instead of battling him, and caused the player to control the final boss against the entirety of your former party. Destroying them was quick and brutal, and afterwards the game left no doubt in the player's mind as to the fate of humanity (it was blown up).

In Treasure of the Rudra, you get one when you are at the bio tanks and input the wrong combination to stop the pollution.

Abusing Data Hack in the original .hack tetrology causes the game to glitch and malfunction as your rate of viral infection increased. Allow your infection rate to exceed 100%, and suffer a SYSTEM ERROR.

In Planescape: Torment, the protagonist is immortal... with a few exceptions. Making the Lady of Pain angry can do this. Do it once, and she punishes you by sending you to a special Maze. That's the lenient punishment, and her way of saying, "this is a warning". Make her mad a second time, and that's it. Game Over. Lothar, the master necromancer can do this too, as he's mastered the arts of death just that well, and he has an even shorter fuse. By plot, you are bound to resurrect each time you are killed, often with little more than a snarky comment from one of your party members. There are two "deaths" from which you can't recover, though: sitting on the throne of the Silent King, which dooms you to rule over the Catacombs forever, or pestering a Gorgon enough for her to get pissed and petrify you.

Signing a ceasefire with a major enemy group in Super Robot Wars Alpha 3 results in a sequence of events over several missions in which the situation degrades until your army dies a horrible death. In the same game, should a particular character be defeated in action, its defeat causes the end of all existence, complete with a special game over screen.

Several of the Boktai games have non-standard bad endings if the player ever abuses the vampiric side his character is cursed with in later parts of the series.

Metal Saga features several Nonstandard Game Overs, usually for humor and initiated with a single conversation. The very first appears before the game even begins, when the player character's mother asks if he'd like to stay and work in the family garage instead of embarking on a quest for fame and fortune. If the player agrees, an epilogue detailing the rest of the character's life (which is entirely un-noteworthy) begins and the game ends. The player character may also marry his first prospective party member at any time simply by asking her, at which point they both quit adventuring to start a family.

In Dragon Quest, when you finally face the Dragonlord, he offers you a chance to join him and rule half the world. Smart players select "no" and get on with the battle, but if you choose "yes" (and confirm it): "Then half of this world is thine, half of the darkness, and... If thou dies I can bring thee back for another attempt without loss of thy deeds to date." Then the screen turns red. "Thy journey is over. Take now a long, long rest. Hahahaha..." Then you're dead. It's been rumored that this also erases your game data, but that is not correct.

The Code Geass game for Nintendo DS normally uses a still picture from the show's ending credits as the Game Over screen, with a voiceover by C.C. admonishing the player to not be so stupid next time. However, one can earn a Non-Standard Game Over simply by choosing not to interfere with Euphemia's special administrative region, which goes off successfully, avoiding the slaughter from the TV show completely. This turn of events yields a different quote from C.C.: "Well, this is a Good Ending, I guess..."

Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume gives you an unwinnable battle where Freya comes to kick your ass, and a different ending if you abuse the Plume too much in chapters 3 and 4. And like before, even with cheats, the game ends as the death of her causes a premature end of the world, and Ailyth won't approve of that.

Fire Emblem7 has an interesting case — in one of the sidechapters, the completion goal is to make it to the other side of the map and talk to the boss, Fargus, in order to earn being ferried by his crew to the Dread Isle. If you so choose to attack Fargus, he'll probably kill any unit you have at the time. But if you somehow defeat him, the mission ends with him telling you that you now have no way to continue. Game over. Even if you didn't kill him, he would then refuse to take you to the Dread Isle, resulting in a similar ending.

In Golden Sun, after you let the bad guys make off with the Elemental Stars, you are asked (not told) by your village elder to go after the stars. Refuse twice and the screen fades to a sepia tone, accompanied with the text "And so, the world drifted towards its fated destruction." You are then given the option of continuing from the beginning of the conversation. This is ironic because the destruction it is describing is the slow erosion described in the second game, due to alchemy not being unlocked, but you assume it is because alchemy WAS unlocked that the world ended.Golden Sun: The Lost Age justifies it, since after lighting three out of four lighthouses, the world's erosion at the hands of Alchemy gets direr until the fourth one is lit. But the Mars Star was in Isaac's hands all along, so Felix never had the chance to seize it before the erosion devoured Prox and the Mars Lighthouse.

In Persona 4, if someone appears on the Midnight Channel, you have to rescue the person from the TV world before a certain date passes. If the deadline passes and you didn't save the person, said person will die when the fog is at its heaviest. Your hero collapses and you are then given the option to exit to the title screen or flash back seven days to try again. The stated in-game reason for this Game Over is not because the person dies (though that's obviously the motivation), but because the death frustrates any further attempts by the hero to investigate the murders due to lack of clues or information. And the very last person — if you fail, instead, one of the characters calls the hero to tell them that shadows are coming out of the TV, and suddenly cuts off with a scream.

Persona 5: Like in Persona 4, if you fail to complete the dungeon in time, you're shown a sequence of what happens afterwards, however what happens in unique to each dungeon. Possible consequences include: Yusuke remaining stuck in a life abused by Madarame, Makoto ending up at an "illegal services shop", Futaba committing suicide and Haru being forced into an abusive marriage. However, these are false memories caused by the drugs the Protagonist was under during the interrogation with Sae after the Casino Heist. They all end with Sae leaving the room to give the Protagonist time to recover from the drugs so that he can give a truer account but ends up getting killed when she leaves.

In Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World, if you defeat Lloyd and Marta in the game's penultimate boss battle, you don't proceed to the real final boss. Instead, you get a scene where Emil commits suicide upon seeing that he wounded Marta while faking possession by his Superpowered Evil Side and becomes a core. The final scene is days later and shows Marta writing in a diary as if to Emil, noting that they will never see him again.

At the very start, you can refuse the Pure Heart that Merlon tries to give you by saying "No" three times (with Merlon getting increasingly desperate each time.) After that, he'll wander off worrying, you get a text screen saying that the universe was destroyed, and it's Game Over. This is before you even get to control your character!

When you get the fishbowl and enter the space world, Tippi tells you to put it on. If you refuse several times (even after she lampshades that Mario canbreathe underwater), and then say yes to "do you really want to meet a terrible fate?", it's Game Over. In fact, she basically calls you a moron and lets you die.

When Queen Jaydes asks Mario to find Luvbi, he has the option to refuse. Refusing enough times will result in Jaydes zapping Mario with lightning and stating that he shall be condemned for eternity.

Near the end, Dimentio will ask you to join his side. Say yes three times and he will promptly enslave you.

In Paper Mario: Sticker Star, you can drown in quicksand in the overworld - this is nothing new. However, if you fight an enemy on a quicksand pit like a Pokey, take too long to select a move in the battle screens and you can drown in quicksand there too - hence, this game allows you to die on a menu screen. There's also poison water in the forest world that periodically damages you if you don't take your turn.

In Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, you get a Game Over if you fail to exit Bowser's Castle in the allotted time. (Of course, even the first time around, it's easy enough that it shouldn't take even half the time the game gives you.)

In the Magic Knight Rayearth RPG for the SNES, there is one battle where you're pitted agains your mind controlled friends. Defeat them, and you get a screen telling you that you're a bad friend, and a game over. Losing to any of the final dungeon's bosses gives you a Nonstandard Game Over as well; each boss has a different one.

There is one mission where a group of angels are fighting it out with a group of demons. Honda and some random civvie are also in this fight. If you choose to side with the demons and go along with Honda's plan to escape the blockade, the mission completes... until you get a montage and text explaining that while you did manage to escape the lockdown, on the Final Day, God's judgment kills everyone in the Yamanote Loop and humanity is completely controlled by Heaven. Then you get the Mission Failed screen. Nice Job Triggering Instrumentality, Hero.

In the sequel, you can trigger a game over from the start-up by refusing being saved from the train wreck.

In E.V.O.: Search for Eden, several bosses ask you to join them (the Tyrasaurs at the end of the dinosaur stage, the Birdman King in the first mammal stage, and the boss Rogon in the final stage). Saying "yes" results in a short (and usually somewhat comedic) ending, then puts you back on the world map. You also get dialogue choices with the Yeti, but both lead to the same result (fighting him).

There are a few points in Half-Minute Hero's "Hero 30" mode where failing to complete the stage's objective before defeating its Evil Overlord will prematurely end your journey. Instead of the world exploding, you'll be treated to a still picture of what your hero wound up doing because he couldn't proceed (stranded on an island, forced into back-breaking slavery, etc.), and you won't be allowed to save your scores for that attempt.

During Archangel's recruitment mission, you can side with the mercenaries hunting him down. Doing so results in Archangel's death and a Critical Mission Failure.

During Samara's loyalty mission, you can recruit Morinth instead of Samara. Once aboard the Normandy, you then have the option to seduce Morinth. Doing so causes things to end about as well as you'd expect.

Joker will meet an untimely end at the hands of the Collectors if you rush too quickly during their attack and abduction of the Normandy crew.

Not unlocking the valves fast enough for your chosen Tech expert during the Suicide Mission will lead to an abrupt Game Over.

If you take too long to defeat David during the final boss fight in the Overlord DLC, it will upload to the Normandy and infect EDI.

Wait for the Arrival Countdown to hit Zero during the second scene and Shepard will experience what is a rapid glimpse of Reapers coming down on the galaxy to cleanse all life.

You can technically win the game, yet still get one of these. A normal win allows you to continue playing in the aftermath for missions you didn't do or play the Downloadable Content as it comes out, and will give you the option to upload the storyline into Mass Effect 3. But if you didn't bother to prepare at all for the suicide mission (not getting certain ship upgrades, or doing any loyalty missions), all of your party members die by the end of the Final Battle, along with Commander Shepard. That's just not very conducive to epilogue play, but you did technically win the game (if you want to call that "winning"). However, it still counts as a nonstandard game over since a save game with an ending where Shepard dies cannot be imported into Mass Effect 3, and is pretty much the only story-possibility or choice that the Expanded Universe directly contradicts.

If you take too long to use the laser designator on the Reaper-Destroyer during Priority: Rannoch, it'll end up destroying the quarian fleet.

If you're unable to convince the Illusive Man to shoot himself, failing to take the Renegade interrupt(s) provided results in him shooting and killing Shepard.

Taking too long to make the final decision results in the destruction of the Crucible.

In the Omega DLC, taking too long on the final segment will result in Aria's death.

During the Citadel DLC, you're required to infiltrate a party at a casino. Being detected is a Critical Mission Failure.

In Infinite Space, you wind up in some sort of negative space where it's unhealthy to stay. You are presented with three options, and in two of the options you slowly drift around, with the situation getting worse and worse. You think you will get rescued or catch a lucky break, but instead your party poofs into nothingness.

In Suikoden II, Tinto City gets overrun by zombies, and it can be at this point that the poor kid just decides that he can't handle it anymore. This can result in him (and his adopted sister) deciding to cut their losses and make a mad dash for safety. Of course, the core of your several-dozen-strong entourage comes after you once they realize you're gone. If you persist in leaving, one of the leaders of your army will die. From here, if you change your mind and decide to go back, said dead person will be replaced by his son. The hero's second-in-command will Bright Slap him and ask him to come back one last time. If you leave the town to the south, the screen will fade slowly and be replaced by a still picture of a log cabin, indicating that the hero and his sister have chosen to live away from society, in order to have a so-called 'normal life' without wars or fighting.

In Suikoden IV you can elect to stay and make a life for yourself and your two companions on a deserted island as opposed to looking for a way to escape. This is a particularily insidious one since it never ends; you are placed into a "Groundhog Day" Loop repeating the same actions over and over, leading some players to think that they are still playing the game and are stuck. It does hint that something's different by replacing the character portraits with black and white sketches and removing the local save point. Also on the scene if you don't use the Rune of Punishment and let your flagship get rammed by the enemy.

If you fail to defeat Roy in a duel, you're put into a coma from the injuries, and your group forces Roy to take your place, but soon the army's overrun. "Perhaps it's a good thing that he won't wake up."

In Suikoden Tierkreis, if you choose to agree with the plan to sacrifice all of the Starbearers to stop The One King, this will result in the main character becoming the new One King instead. On the other hand, this also provides more information about the Tierkreis world.

In The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, for most of the main quest, Martin Septim is flagged as essential, meaning that if his HP gets reduced to zero, he will not die, but will instead be knocked unconscious for a few seconds. But during two points of the main quest (the battle at Bruma and the final mission in the Imperial City), he loses his essential status, and if he dies, it shows a few lines of text and prompts you to reload. Made worse by a glitch that prevents him from equipping proper armor during the former event, forcing you to exploit another glitch to keep him alive.

Keep on talking to CaloNord in the Lower City cantina. You won't last long.

In court on Manaan following the raid on the Sith base, pleading guilty or failing to convince the court that the Sith broke the neutrality agreement. note If you do not trigger the Missing Selkath quest by talking to Shaelas, you can still bail out by stating that "the Sith lured you there" under the pretext of "diplomatic relations". You win by creating reasonable doubt, as such an action is "within character" for the Sith.

Getting blown up during a fighter sequence.

On the Unknown World, when approaching the Elder base, answering "I'm with the Rakata" triggers the Elders' defenses, wiping your group out instantly. note A workaround that sometimes does the trick is to go into solo mode, leave your other two party members WAY back from the entrance, and then trigger the option. It'll take down the Player Character, but the other two still might remain alive

If you have the cheat console, typing "Dancedancemalak" before the final fight activates a cutscene where you turn Malak into a Twi'lek dancing girl and boogie together for a few seconds.

If you play Dark Side and female, there was a third ending where Carth's plea for a Last-Second Chance works and the two of you opt to die together on the collapsing Star Forge. It is very easy to restore, however.

You'll come across a part where a new ally will ask you if you're afraid of the monsters. Answering 'no' twice is the only way to recruit him, while saying 'yes' at any point of the conversation will result in an automatic game over... regardless of how many lives you have!

Later on in the game, you'll have to guess that Coronya is really Scheherazade, and a wrong guess will result in an instant game over, again regardless of how many lives you have. Hope you are good at spelling!

Kingdom Hearts II: during a lot of timed battles, a few bosses, and battles where the objective is to prevent a party member from dying, there's a possibility that you'll be booted to the Game Over screen before running out of HP. Should this happen, you'll get an image of Sora standing there pouting, rather than his usual floating around dead animation. Most memorably happens during the Demyx battle.

In Vay, you're required to seek out the help from the wind fairy Sirufa in order to get across the continent to find one of the Orbs. However, the "wind" needed to get across is actually a killer case of flatulence, and all three of your party members need to wear gas masks before they enter her domain, or else they'll pass out and die, ending your game.

In Biomotor Unitron, losing a battle usually has few repercussions: you leave the Arena or Dungeon and return to the main screen. However, losing to the first Dark Unitron causes the game to cut to a Game Over screen, which the game never normally displays.

There is one in Chapter 2. In Osohe Castle, there is a statue holding a heavy metal ball. Ramming into this statue causes the ball to fall off the statue and through a crack in the floor. If Duster is stupid enough to stand in the place where the crack is after ramming into it, the metal ball will crush him and trigger a game over. This is the only game over in the entire game that is not triggered by an enemy.

If, at any point, you make physical contact with the Ultimate Chimera, you're not even given a hopeless boss battle; the Ultimate Chimera starts chomping, complete with biting sound effects, and the screen fades to red before going to the standard "Retry?" screen.

Radiant Historia turns this into an art form. The game will regularly present you with two choices of what to do next, and aside from the very first one, one of these choices will always lead to some sort of horrible ripple effect that makes it impossible to save the world. Given that it's a game about time travel, Stocke just warps back to Historia, gets a lecture on what he did wrong from the resident Spirit Advisors, and goes back to try it over again.

Ib, a RPG Maker game, does this sometimes, especially where a picture of a crazed neon face keeps asking for for a flower and you can offer your rose to it. Garry will advise you to not trust this guy, but you can insist and then... "CHOW TIME!". Yep, a picture eats your rose... YOUR LIFE!. As of 1.04, if you meet certain requirements and generally do really bad at the game, then when you reach the doll room event, failing said event causes Garry to go insane, Ib to have a nervous breakdown, and depending on her bond points with Ib, Mary will either stay with Ib and Garry in the painted world or she'll attempt an escape on her own and fail miserably. Not only does this cut the game short before you even reach the final chapter, but no one escapes despite all your best efforts of getting them out of there.

Amusingly played in Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden. If the final boss's We Can Rule Together offer is accepted, Barkley is immediately hypnotized and his very first course of action is to kill his son Hoopz, who, up to that point, was the main reason he was adventuring in the first place. Besides that dialog choice, it's also possible to die outside of combat during a Quick Time Event or while navigating the sugar cave.

One of the earliest examples comes from the 1980s era CRPG The Magic Candle. At the very beginning of the game, you are asked by the King to accept the game's major quest. You have the option of declining, and if you do, the game ends immediately and unceremoniously.

The Last Story: If you refuse to marry Calista 3 times in chapter 42, you get a Game Over.

Jade Empire has one as well during the final boss fight. Your opponent gives you the chance to surrender and lay down your life for the greater good (in his eyes). If you do, he kills you and a scene plays showing a statue of your character in the armor of your enemy in a dystopic future, with the final boss laughing evilly.

In Atelier Meruru: The Apprentice of Arland, if at any time you allow Meruru's popularity to drop to zero, then Rufus comes to the workshop, chastises her, and then sends her before her father Dessier, who is so mad at her that he reneges on his promise and ends her alchemy studies immediately, followed by a Game Over without even getting the Bad Ending (and thus no "Castle Life" Trophy.)

Parasite Eve has two non-standard game overs. After defeating the mutant spider on the hospital roof, Eve kills one of the pilots of a fighter jet and if you don't run to the maintenance lift in time, the jet crashes onto the roof and explodes, taking you with it. After the final battle at the end of the game, the Final Boss revives itself and slowly chases after you while picking up speed and then starts to fly after you. If the creature touches you at any point, it's an instant game over.

Monster Hunter Tri (and Ultimate, by extension) triggers a nonstandard game over during missions in which the player kills a target monster when the point is to capture it alive. Rarer instances include letting Ceadeus enter the last area of the underwater ruins before cutting its beard and letting Jhen Mohran destroy completely the dragon ship.

Pandora's Tower mixes this with You Lose at Zero Trust: If you neglect Elena in spite of being reminded several times that The Power of Love is one of the few things that keep her curse at bay, she will die (by your hand, no less) and net you a Game Over before unlocking the last two towers.

In Arx Fatalis, it is possible for the player to, by killing the friendly and plot-critical king, and stealing a key from his body, to open the doors leading to the surface. On opening the door, you are instantly frozen solid and die.

In Exile there's a few, mostly when you kill a major NPC you're not supposed to, like King Micah or Erika Redmark. But the one that really takes the cake is the one in Exile II, where you can open a portal that will eventually collapse the entire northwester quarter of the underworld, killing hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions of people - including your party. But on the "bright" side, it will stop the Empire invasion, since most of their troops were in that area.

In Driftmoon choosing to join the Big Bad Ixal gives you an ending where the main character becomes a puppet in his army of undead.

In Drakan: The Ancients' Gates, near the end of the game you need to get into a castle run by someone known as the Flesh Mage. The only way in involves passing through a pacification spell. You are warned about this several times and told to go get a potion to protect yourself. However, nothing stops you from simply walking in whereupon you fall unconscious. A cutscene follows where you are a prisoner of the Flesh Mage and get a face to face meeting with him, then the screen goes black along with a brief scream as he begins skinning you alive.

Near the end, you are informed that a snuke has been planted inside the butthole of Mr. Slave. Someone suggests that the only way to retrieve it would be for someone to shrink and deactivate it manually. Of course, the player is the only one who can do that, but the rest of the characters on screen start trying to figure out who could do it. At this point, the player has the choice to shrink down to volunteer or to leave the room. Choosing the second option will cause the snuke to explode, and the game to show the TV-show-style credits prior to the "Game Over" screen.

There's also the desperation attack from the first boss: calling the player's parents. If he succeeds, the player's father calls him to tell him he's grounded, followed by the usual Game Over screen.

In Shin Megami Tensei IV, if you fall in battle, you are greeted by Charon, who offers to resurrect you for a fee of Macca or 3DS Play Coins. If you choose to pay in Macca, but don't have enough of it, he'll let you come back to life anyway, but if you die again before getting enough Macca to pay off the debt, you're treated to a unique sequence in which Charon notes that he can't revive you and has your soul thrown aside. You can also choose to not be brought back to life, but instead to wait in line like the many other (billions) souls. He then points out that you'll be waiting for eons, if not longer, to be resurrected, and come on, it's just a little money, right? If you still choose to wait, he tells you to get in line and the game ends.

In Dink Smallwood mod If Ducks Ruled the World taking too long to get to the ducks in question means that their evil plan is a success and the world...changes from color to grayscale, after which King Daniel chews you out for it and you get to restart or quit.

If you get evicted from the ball by reaching 0 court approval during Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts, you are told that Orlais was left leaderless and thrown in chaos, leaving both it and your Inquisition easy prey for the Big Bad.

If you decided to side with the Templars earlier on and fail to defend the Great Hall by reaching 0 status (or dying), you are told that the Red Templars rampage across Thedas, killing or enslaving everyone and you are shown Ser Barris being executed by a Red Templar Horror.

If you die while attempting to escape the Envy Demon during Champions of the Just, you are told that it impersonates you and uses the Inquisition to conquer the world and destroy the Chantry.

At the end of any type of "Neutral" route; after you beat what appears to be the final boss, Flowey will appear, hijack the six souls, and gain enough power to demolish the fourth wall and become Photoshop Flowey, fighting you in the actual last battle. If you die (and you most likely will at least once), you get sent to the Game Over screen... which is being run by Flowey, as this is his save file. He mocks you about the nightmare you'll never wake up from, and will exit out of the game rather than let you continue directly. Considering this game was made by the developer of The Halloween Hack, which pulled a similar trick, this may or may not be surprising.

At the end of a No Mercy run, you square off against Sans, the lazy skeleton brother, who has shown his true power in a desperate attempt to get you to stop this run before you ruin everything. Around the halfway point of the battle, the boss (clearly showing signs of tiring out) tries to convince you to have mercy on him, not attacking for a turn, and is able to be Spared. Attack him, and he gets the hint and resumes the fight; Spare him, and Sans will briefly make amends with you... only to reveal that it was a ruse and trap you in an inescapable bone cage until your health runs out and your SOUL shatters as usual. The Game Over screen plays a sped-up "Dogsong", and that coupled with the boss taking over the text really hammers in the fact that you got tricked into letting your guard down by someone who's able to slay you in a blink of an eye, and has a thousand reasons to do so.

In OFF, the Judge offers you a battle tutorial, during which he intructs you to not pick the Auto option, as he wouldn't be able to survive your onslaught. If you do so anyway and let the computer act long enough, the Judge will indeed die, leaving you without a guide and abruptly giving you a Game Over.

Near the end of Wizardry 8, the player's party will learn that The Dark Savant has set up a bomb that will destroy the planet that the game takes place on. Of course, the right course of action is to disable the bomb, but the player can ignore that. If they do so, then upon reaching the end of Ascension Peak, they will meet The Dark Savant, who will taunt them about forgetting this. Afterwards, he teleports out, and the bomb will go off. The game over screen will change to reflect this, with a comedic message along the lines of, 'Not what you hoped for, but then, no one lives forever.'

Losing to Teagan results in her deciding to Mercy Kill Alto afterwards.

If you lose to the Herald of Winter, Alto's resentful subconscious takes control of her actions and chooses to sabotage the World Tuning to usher in The End of the World as We Know It.

If you lose to the Final Boss, the party dies but Alto is somehow able to pull through long enough to perform the World Tuning with the assistance of the elemental spirits, providing a Bittersweet Ending.

Defeating the final boss without having completed a specific earlier quest in Might and Magic VI gives you a special video that begins the same as the victory video and then goes off in a different direction when without a magic field to contain it the Hive's explosion destroys the entire world.

Shoot 'em Up

Sega's 1981 Astro Blaster can have you lose the entire game if you crash into the mothership during the docking sequence at the end of every level.

Space Invaders: Perhaps one of the earliest video game examples; allowing even one of the eponymous alien ships to reach the bottom of the playfield results in an instant game over, no matter how many lives you have left. This is retained in Return of the Invaders but averted in Super Space Invaders '91 because of the difficulty of the differing formations in each wave: you simply die and the playfield is reset, minus any Invaders you destroyed previously.

Simply getting yourself blown up would earn a normal game over. Failing a mission or otherwise rendering the level Unwinnable, however, would result in your being recalled to base for a dressing-down from your commanding officer which changed according to what you did wrong. (From Jungle Strike's first level, if you tried someMonumental Damage of your own: "You redecorated the White House, Beruit style!")

In Nuclear Strike, it is possible to have a nonstandard game over piled on top of a nonstandard game over. If you tried to refuel thrice after being told to return to base because of a SNAFU, General Earle orders your (literal) termination for going rogue.

The Ur-Quan, being the reasonable people they are, will allow you to surrender to them and offer to spare the lives of your crew in exchange. They're not going to let you live, of course, and even if they did, you wouldn't have your plot-necessary Cool Spaceship anymore, so if you accept, the conversation cuts directly to a Game Over screen. Still, quite a magnanimous offer considering that everyone on your ship is currently engaged in fully voluntary rebellion.

The game has a time limit, in that eventually the Ur-Quan Kohr-Ah who have an agenda of total genocide will triumph over the green Ur-Quan and begin moving to exterminate all sentient life in the galaxy. You can monitor their progress on the galactic map as they move from species to species. Eventually, they will head for Earth, and if they arrive before you eliminate their flagship and halt their advance, the population of Earth is eradicated and it's game over.

Star Control III can end abruptly if you allow the Eternal Ones to feed on the galaxy without improving their process to be survivable to the natives. You also get a game over if you're too trusting of the Orz, Arilou, or Ploxis, or commit enough war crimes (or bad enough war crimes) to be fired from your leadership position.

Einhänder, Stage 6: Fail to destroy the space shuttle's thrusters in time and your craft plummets to earth, where it is immediately set upon by German forces. The game ends here even if you have extra lives remaining.

Galaga: You can get your ship captured by an enemy, then shoot down said enemy to obtain the double ship. However, if the captured ship is your last ship, the game will end instead, as if you had been shot down.

Confidential Mission: If you and your CPU partner—or the other player in a two-player game—don't both lock the Kill Sat onto the submarine and then fire, the Big Bad gets away and the island that you're on blows up. Part Downer Ending, part Game Over since the "MISSION INCOMPLETE" screen shows up.

Fantasy Zone: The second game's PS2 remake has three endings, and in the worst of them, Opa-Opa turns evil and spreads chaos throughout the Fantasy Zone. It doubles as a non-standard game over, as it is the only ending that doesn't lead to a New Game+, and downright says Game Over.

If you shoot too many friendly ships or escorts in the first game, Rieekan will contact Luke to return to base so he can "discuss [Skywalker's]... tactics... in private."

In the first mission of Rogue Leader, you have a limited amount of torpedoes, and must save at least one of them to complete an objective later. Waste them all and the mission abruptly ends in failure, with a cutscene of Yavin IV going kaboom.

The unreleasedStar Fox 2 has an alternate Game Over screen. Let Corneria take too much damage, and you'll get a cutscene that shows it being destroyed by Andross's forces. The Game Over screen will show Andross grinning like normal, but will read "Corneria fell".

Simulation Game

In the late-80s jet combat simulator Jet Fighter II: Advanced Tactical Fighter, a successful ejection would result in the message: "Successful bailout! Rescue copter is on its way! Isn't simulating stimulating?"

There are three non-standard Game Overs in Harvest Moon DS and two or three in Harvest Moon DS Cute.

The first is during the opening sequence, when Mayor Thomas from Mineral Town annoys your character into attacking him. The dog will then become angry. You'll have the option to call your dog back. Refuse, and Thomas will scream and the screen fades to white as the dog attacks him. The credits roll, and you're taken back to the title screen.

This next one takes a very long time to get...you have to grow a Level 100 Toadstool, then submit it at the Harvest Festival. The entire town (including you) will grow sick. The credits roll, and you're taken back to the title screen.

If you turn on HMDS with Harvest Moon Friends Of Mineral Town in the GBA slot (or HMDSC with Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral Town), villagers from Mineral Town will start to visit Forget-Me-Not Valley. You only have to do this once to make them keep coming back forever. The Mineral Town girls in DS are marriage candidates... but marrying any of them will take you back to the title screen and revert back to your last save file. This is changed in DS Cute, though, allowing you to continue the game with a Mineral Town husband.

In the English version of Harvest Moon: Magical Melody, marrying your rival, Jamie, will cause the game to end as they weren't marriageable in the Japanese version, and thus nothing was written for them post-marriage.

In the Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life subseries, your game ends if you are not married by the end of the first year.note Though this is more a Earn Your Bad Ending scenario, as the game will have the bachelor(ette) with the highest affection level propose to you, and you have to turn them down to get the game over In later chapters, allowing your farm and shipment levels to fall by the wayside can cause your wife to leave you. In the PS2 special edition, you can end the game in the first cutscene by simply telling Takakura you don't want the farm.

In Harvest Moon SNES, if your farm is in bad enough condition by the time your parents visit the first time (about six months in) you'll be booted from the farm and, most likely, have to re-start the game. Though since it takes so little to make your farm acceptable, this becomes an Earn Your Bad Ending scenario.

In the first game, if the Tiger's Claw is destroyed, you get a message saying "With your carrier destroyed, you drift endlessly through the void..."

In Wing Commander IV, if you repeatedly screw up your early missions, say, by immediately ejecting on launch for every mission you get, Tolwyn hands you your pink slip in a hysterically dark cut scene.

In Wing Commander III, screwing up critical missions results in the fleet jumping back to Proxima and then making a Last Stand at Sol. This mission is unwinnable even with godmode, and drops you into another cutscene where you can decide how you die. This is quite possibly the Nonstandard Game Over that's drawn out the longest. If it is possible to save before the mission, pray you didn't save it over your previous save game.

New Blood, Episode 5: Run out of time on the lock-picking mission, and instead of "Your skills were not up to the task — Operation Failed", you hear the sound of water filling up as the screen fades to white.

Trauma Team also gets one. If you fail on Naomi's final case, instead of the normal message/suicide note, you get a recording of Rosalia talking about Albert and the Rosalia Virus.

In the Star Wars: Rogue Squadron series, failing a critical mission objective will cause the mission to end (even if you are still intact), followed by a "MISSION FAILED" screen (instead of "GAME OVER") with a description of what triggered mission failure. Also, if you shoot down allies/convoys/things you're supposed to be protecting you get a warning or two - "Skywalker, what are you doing?!" — and then Rieekan calls you back with "Commander Skywalker, return to base. We'll discuss your... tactics... in private." In Rogue Leader, it's possible to get a unique game over by running out of torpedoes in the attack on the Death Star. Cue Yavin IV getting blown the hell up.

In the 1985 game Balance of Power, pushing too hard in international negotiations would result in an immediate end to the game, with a black screen displaying the message: "You have ignited a nuclear war. And no, there is no animated display of a mushroom cloud with parts of bodies flying through the air. We do not reward failure."

In F/A-18 Hornet, if you land or eject in enemy territory, you get captured and are listed as "Missing in Action". If you cause any collateral damage, you are "Court Martialed".

In X Wing Vs Tie Fighter, if you fail at a mission (rather than just dying, ejecting, or hyperspacing out of there before the mission's done), you'll be treated to some tragic music. Depending on how well you did, you might be the sole survivor, or your enemy might curb stomp you.

The Oregon Trail II: "You're Fired!" (kicked out of the wagon train), if you're a trail guide and morale gets too low.

Sports Game

Super Bases Loaded for the SNES. In this particular sports game, you end up getting the Non-Standard Game Over screen, should the CPU completely blow you out by getting 9 runs straight. It will not even wait for you to make it to 9 innings. Instead, it will briefly freeze, then show someone from your team kneeling in defeat, with the word "Blowout" over their head, with some sad music. From there, it will go to the scoreboard, and the words "Blowout Game" will appear. From there, it will promptly go back to the title screen.

Baseball Stars uses a similar "mercy rule", ending the game if either team is ahead by ten or more runs at any point. So did Sega's Sports Talk Baseball for the Genesis. It was explicitly called a "10-run Rule", and the talking commentator would say the team won "by domination".

Mario Superstar Baseball and Mario Super Sluggers have a rule (which can be disabled in normal game modes, but is always active in story mode) where being 10 runs ahead at the end of an inning ends the game; however, if the visiting team is 10 runs ahead in the top of the inning, the home team still gets the bottom of the inning to even the score before it kicks in.

In Blitz: The League 2, getting Franchise injured in Prison Ball will end the game, as you have ruined your career. Unlike in other modes of the game, Prison Ball will not let you perform triage if an injury occurs.

Stealth-Based Game

In Splinter Cell: Double Agent, if you fail the final minigame-for-a-boss, you are treated to a very disturbingly realistic portrayal of emergency services and news helicopters flying over Manhattan as a smoking ruin after a nuclear blast.

In the first Splinter Cell game, you are on a training facility, and at a certain point you get a gun. If you turn back and kill an officer, you get fired. You also get fired if you attack Grimsdottir in the beginning of the level. Same for any level with friendlies or other NPC's you are required to keep alive.

The original Metal Gear Solid used the Nonstandard Game Over as a plot device on one occasion, being told before a possibly-fatal Minigame that "there are no continues, my friend...". And, of course, dying results in a non-standard game over screen — with no CONTINUE option. A player would have to quit the game and reload before they could try again. The game can go even further to psych out the player here. If you haven't saved in a while, the game will detect this and call you out on it. "Do you really want to lose all of your progress?"

In Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, during the Tanker chapter, if Snake gets caught sneaking around in the holds during the Commandant's speech, the player is shown the soldiers in whatever room he's in taking Snake into custody before "Game Over" is displayed.

MGS2 uses a completely different "Game Over" screen for the solo Raiden missions that's unlike the "Game Over" screen when playing as Snake or even as Snake/Raiden later in the game. Around the time both characters join forces, the player learns why this is.

In Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, which is a prequel, you meet a young version of Ocelot from the previous games. He's supposed to survive the events of the game, but in one occasion you can kill him after he's been knocked out in a cutscene. If you do so, you'll have Colonel Campbell, from the 'future', shout "Snake, what have you done? You changed the future! You've created a time paradox!", and the words "OCELOT IS DEAD" will appear, instead of the usual game over text. This also applies to other characters whose actions affect the rest of the series, but Ocelot is the most notable. You even get a achievement for this in the HD Version.

There's a few cases in Metal Gear Solid and its sequel, in particular, where you get a wildly different Informal Eulogy depending on the circumstances. Crash into the tripwires surrounding Baker, and Ocelot will call you an idiot/fool depending on if you're playing the remake or not. Fail the torture, and not only will your CONTINUE option be missing, but you'll get to hear Liquid yell at Ocelot for getting carried away and botching another interrogation. Die during the final battle in Metal Gear Solid 2 after your "support" team has dropped their façade, and they'll laugh at your failure.

In Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, die during the final battle & you will be given the choice to "Continue" or "Exist". Choose the latter, and you will hear Ocelot tell you "It's not over yet, Snake!" and you will have to choose again, only "Exist" will have returned to the traditional "Exit".

Rather than Snake dying, there are other ways you can get a Game Over. If, for example, you kill Johnny in MGS4, Otacon will shout "Snake, what did you just do? Have you lost your mind?!", and as soon as the Game Over screen appears, Otacon says "Oh no! What are we going to do now, Snake?"

If Ishmael dies in the tutorial level, you'll get a "Time Paradox" message Foreshadowing the fact that he's the real Big Boss.

You'll also get one of these if you kill one of your own men while on Mother Base by throwing them into the ocean, where Miller screams "Have you lost your mind?!".

In Mission 1, where you have to rescue Miller, Ocelot tells you he only has about 3 days to live. If you wait 3 days, either by using the Phantom Cigar or simply by taking too long, he will be unresponsive when you trigger his cutscene, and when Snake lets go of his face, it will stiffly lull to a downward position, causing Snake to scream in agony and Ocelot to solemnly inform you that Miller has died from extensive blood loss due to his severed limbs. This also results in a "Time Paradox" message.

Killing any child soldiers in Africa causes the screen to flash red and the camera to focus on the corpse before going to the normal game over screen.

Killing Eli in Mission 23 will also result in a Time Paradox message. This is because he is Liquid Snake.

Batman: Arkham Asylum has quite a few of these. If you let Zsasz see you when he has the guard in the electric chair, true to his word, he electrocutes him. If Batman is in Joker Venom for too long, he laughs himself to death. If Batman doesn't set off his trap for Killer Croc, we are treated to a first-person shot of Croc lunging at his head, along with the sound of bones getting crushed. There are several more examples, but one of the more humorous ones is when Zsasz has Dr. Young trapped in his arms; if you are seen, miss your Batarang, or if you wait too long, Zsasz kills her, with the Joker mocking you.

Joker: Who would have thought the deranged murderer would really kill the poor, little doctor?

In Batman: Arkham City, after Catwoman successfully loots Hugo Strange's vault, she gets the option of either going to save Batman (who has just been captured by TYGER) or escaping with her loot. Doing the latter cuts to the credits where you hear a message from Oracle saying how the Joker rampaged through Gotham, Gordon is dead, Wayne Manor has been compromised, and that The Bad Guys Win. The game then rewinds all the way back to the choice and makes the player choose to save Batman.

Two of them as death cutscenes in Hitman: Blood Money. The first is in You Better Watch Out... where an unknown Franchise assassin disguised as one of the strippers stabs 47 in the neck with a nail file. The second is in A Dance with the Devil; the singer is actually a Franchise assassin named Eve, who will try to seduce you. Should you follow her and wait for too long, she will stab 47 repeatedly.

Survival Horror

In Silent Hill 3, if you die a certain way or in a certain place, Valtiel is shown carrying away Heather's body. And if Heather shoots Claudia, Heather "births" the god and dies in a rather gruesome cutscene, where Claudia says "Oh God, bring us salvation".

In Fatal Frame II, if you decide to use the secret passage to escape from the haunted village without your twin sister Mayu, you'll get a scene and then one of these. It could actually qualify as a bad ending, since it's a viable conclusion to the story and even suckier than the already depressing regular (and canonical!) ending.

Freddy has two killscreens and is the only animatronic to have as such. One when the power runs out and another when he enters the office during normal play.

Golden Freddy. When you look at the poster at the end of the West Hall while it displays his face, he appears in your office. You will then hear robotic murmurs and hallucinations just before he instantly kills you and crashes the game, but only if you don't pull up your monitor and switch to another camera.

If Ashley gets captured, a cutscene is shown of the Ganado carrying her off and the game over screen says "Mission Failed" instead of "You are Dead". This also occurs if she is killed, either by an enemy or your bad aim.

Also, in an early scene, where you defend a cabin with Luis, if you shoot him too many times, you're treated to a cutscene where he gets sick of it and guns you down.

Resident Evil 5 also has one. If Chris kills a brainwashed Jill in the middle of the fight, you're treated to a death cutscene and a screen that says "Your Partner Died" like you would get for any of Sheva's deaths.

In Slender: The Arrival, if you somehow manage to find your way out of the map's boundaries (either by mistake or by purposefully trying to glitch out of bounds), you will eventually end up falling through the map and get the standard Game Over screen, except there will be an additional message overlayed on the screen in messy-looking text, presumably said by Slenderman: "Even a glitch in this game can't save you from me."

In Dead Rising 2: Off The Record, Frank needs to take a dose of Zombrex once every 24 hours. If Frank doesn't get his shot by 8AM, he will drop dead on the spot.

In SCP - Containment Breach, refusing to cooperate with the guards will have you terminated before the containment breach even occurs.

When the containment breach begins, SCP-173 can snap your neck right before the blackout if you're not careful.

It is also possible to get this with some SCP. For example, if SCP-049 touches you, it triggers a cutscene where you stumble towards a MTF operative, who proceeds to shoot and kill you due to you being infected with its "cure". Likewise, if you let yourself get infected with SCP-008 and not cure it with SCP-500, it will eventually result in a game-over cutscene where you, as a zombie, attack a researcher.

Night Trap has a Game Over that can occur if you don't push start during the opening scene, effectively ending the game before it even starts.

Commander Simms: "You're wasting time, get over there now!" (Beat) "Looks like you're not up for this mission...breaking contact." SCAT System Disconnect

Third Person Shooter

Army Men: Sarge's Heroes has one in the ice level where you free prisoners. If you manage to get yourself locked in a cell, Plastro himself comes out of nowhere to mock you followed by a game over.

Sarge's Heroes 2 has a hilarious one. The tutorial has you follow orders from Colonel Grimm, a.k.a. Vikki's father. You can choose to kill him and simply finish the tutorial yourself, but at the end, instead of Vikki's usual "Congratulations" when you open the last door, she will immediately shoot you with a bazooka as soon as the door opens. Even if you somehow dodge, you still fail.

Kid Icarus: Uprising has several, with what causes them ranging from "failing a critical goal" to "missing a quick-time event".

During the flying segment of Chapter 12, you have to make a detour to destroy a falling Reset Bomb that Viridi deployed as you approached the Reset Bomb Depot. It's a Time-Limit Boss, as with most other aerial boss fights; however, unlike all those other fights, there's not a special event that wins the fight for you if you take too long. If you don't destroy the Reset Bomb in time, then you get a game over because Pit isn't lucky enough to be outside the blast range this time.

Most of Chapter 17 takes place on a platform being held up by Centurions high above the ground. You're being attacked constantly, and the Centurions aren't invincible; they will die if you don't kill the attacking enemies quickly enough. Palutena has an extra set if you let the first two die, but that's it; if you let that set die, then you get some unique dialogue before you get a game over and restart at the last checkpoint.

Chapter 20 ends with a fight against a possessed Palutena. However, the goal is not to attack the boss, but rather to attack the Chaos Kin, which is controlling her. However, it's pretty easy to hit Palutena, and if you do so too many times... game over.

The more minor non-standard game overs include; failing to line up with a target while falling at certain points in Chapters 17, 21, and 25, failing to shoot the Chaos Kin near the end of Chapter 21's flight segment, getting hit by the Great Sacred Treasure's arena-wrecking laser blast in Chapter 24, and failing to keep your reticle on Hades so that Medusa can interrupt his attempt to finish you off in Chapter 25.

If Walker dies before making it to the destroyed helicopter in "Adams", a special loading screen will play where Konrad's silhouette will shake his head at you with the faint voice of "Stop, just fucking stop!" being yelled in the background.

Dying to the hallucinatory Lugo in the next chapter will give the player another one of the White Phosphorous scene, with "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" being hummed in the background. The game then rewinds to the beginning of the fight — except with a Heavy Trooper in Lugo's place.

Turn Based Strategy

The Disgaea series tends to give you often humorous endings for being beaten by the games' Goldfish Poop Gang, or one of the main team members before they've joined the group. Most of them are treated like endings (particularly in 3 and 4, which add lengthy narratives to them), causing the credits to roll, and in some cases, allowing you to start a New Game+ earlier then normal.

In Disgaea 2, a multitude of characters propose bills to be the main character in the Dark Assembly. Should they be passed (and there's a very high chance they will without any intervention on your part), you immediately get a game over. Also, winning the Hopeless Boss Fight against Laharl, or the one against Etna, nets a Non-Standard Game Over as well.

Revisiting the final level of the first chapter in Disgaea 3 and winning the battle there before a certain point in the story also results in a humorous ending where Mao and Almaz openly acknowledge that they've screwed up the plot and the only option is to reset the game.

In Makai Kingdom postgame, you can trigger an encounter with Zetta himself, who turns out to be Overlord Baal possessing Zetta's lost body. Winning the fight nets you the body as a playable character. However, if you've previously shanghaied Laharl and use him as the active character when initiating the encounter, and then winning the fight, results in Laharl claiming the victory instead of Zetta, followed by him destroying the body and ending Zetta's reign.

Waerjak in Heroes of Might and Magic IV can trigger one of these when he meets the Boar's Hoof tribe. Waerjak is given the option of attacking them and claiming their garrison; if he does so, his followers will turn on him, proclaiming his philosophy of community to be a lie.

This is a recurring element throughout the campaigns, made easier by the fact that all events are narrated instead of animated, resulting in various different scenarios that you wouldn't normally see in a game. If Lysander, for example, were to attack Glen Garrison to rescue the Big Bad's mother (instead of finding a way around it), the commander would notify him that he sent his men to execute her. If Elwyn takes the red ship instead of the blue one, Shaera would commit suicide, believing that he died (granted, this is an unnecessary complication of the gameplay, since Harke will bribe the crew to switch the sails, and Elwyn arrives just in time to save the girl anyway, making the outcome pretty much the same).

Might and Magic VI has a special ending video if you complete the end-game dungeon without getting the Ritual of the Void. You are warned that if you destroy the Kreegan Hive's reactor without powerful magic to keep it contained, it will destroy the world. Ignore the advice, and you get to see exactly that happen.

Another way to get this in Might and Magic is in VII, but you'd have to be pretty stupid for it to happen. For one quest in the main storyline, you end up working for two nobles simultaneously, and your actions during the quest require you to betray them both. Treason is a crime punishable by death, and that might make you worried. However, in each case, there are no witnesses and no evidence pointing to you, so neither of them would even suspect you unless you actually confessed. Believe it or not, there's an option that lets you do that when you finish the quest and report back to them. Long story short, if you confess to one of them, you won't live long enough to tell the other.

Blaze Union: Although the game over conditions are normal, losing the battlefield where your female characters are cornered by a gang while shopping leads to a unique scene, where it's explained said party members, one of them in her teens, were so deeply traumatized by the rape the revolution had to be put on hold indefinitely.

Visual Novel

Many of the Ace Attorney games have those, usually in the final cases:

In Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, in the fifth case, there is a piece of evidence that appears to point to one person, but the place where it was found points to the real murderer. If you present it too early, i.e. before the real murderer admits that he was hiding it, you're told that the trial was unwinnable from that point onward, and the word "Guilty" appears on a black background.

Similarly, in Justice for All, right near the end of the 4th case, you're given a chance to show a particular piece of evidence to a particular person. Pick the wrong thing or person, and the villain goes free, an innocent person is convicted, and Phoenix quits being a lawyer. "The miracle never happen..."

Also, in Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, you actually get to pick the verdict at the end, thanks to the jury. If you pick guilty, it results in a hung jury, and the defendant dies in the hospital.

In Ace Attorney Investigations 2, you can refuse to help a mentally unstable and profoundly broken Sebastian Debeste and instead tell him that he's "a failure as a human being". Doing so finally puts him over the edge and ends the case immediately, as he's the only one who can find the evidence his father got rid of.

The final case of Dual Destinies provides unique game over sequences during its sole trial day, which double as badendings:

Fail to prove Simon Blackquill's innocence after he's admitted his guilt, and watch as things spiral go From Bad to Worse: Blackquill is executed the next day as scheduled for a crime he didn't commit, his sister Aura leaves with the hostages she took, including Trucy, and they are never heard from again, Athena leaves the office, Apollo is so broken he stops smiling, and Phoenix gives up on being a lawyer.

Lose during one of the forced questions in the chapter "Remembering the Killer", and Aura Blackquill kidnaps Athena, with Phoenix never seeing her again.

Lose during the final testimony given by the Big Bad and while Athena and Simon Blackquill are let off the hook, the phantom walks away scot-free, and the dark age of the law keeps growing ever darker.

In Spirit of Justice, the final case has multiple outcomes depending on when you lose the case. Lose during the first trial day of the final case and the villainous sleazy politician walks away scott-free with the Founder's Orb, and Apollo and Phoenix's relationship goes down the crapper. In the final trial, losing the case after getting Dhruke acquitted has the real killer's identity remains unknown forever while the revolution completely falls apart due to Dhruke's death. Failure to provide proof that the Queen is the real killer ends with her siccing her guards on Apollo, forcing him to go into hiding with him deciding to join the revolution to overthrow the Queen.

In Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, nonstandard game overs are actually plot-critical. If you try to get the True Ending on your first playthrough, instead you get the Coffin Ending. You need to find the Safe Ending first... Eventually you find that you are actually playing from the perspective of the protagonist's friend in the past. The fact that you know it would be impossible for Junpei to know at the time is because she (you) actually ran through these scenarios where Junpei made this or that decision, gleaning more information about the best way to proceed each time.

This persists in the sequel Virtue's Last Reward. You will be running into a lot of different endings, several of which are 'To Be Continued' path locks that require secret knowledge from other paths to get past.

Virtue's Last Reward normally has fairly standard Game Over conditions: Sigma loses the Nonary Game and either dies or becomes trapped in the facility. But some other Game Overs, which do not even appear on the game's provided flowchart, arise in circumstances where a plot thread is impossibly damaged; for example, if the player managed to annoy Alice enough to alienate her by repeatedly failing to decode a message, the game ends instantly, even though nothing has happened to Sigma.

Zero Time Dilemma has an inversion if you win the coin flip at the beginning of the game. True to his word, Zero releases all of you. Game over. Credits roll. You win. Ten minutes flat.

As a combination Visual Novel/RPG, Fate/EXTRA has one of these for pretty much every defeat by another Master, as well as a number of ways to lose by making a wrong dialog choice. (DEAD END, indeed.)

Fate/stay night has Multiple Endings which are tagged with a descriptive note, with all game-overs being tagged "Dead End" if Shirou dies and "Bad End" in all other cases. The odd ending out is the "Superhero" ending, where Shirou decides to kill Sakura and likely Rin and Ilya as well in order to prevent a disaster. Despite being a very harsh bad ending, it is referred to only as an "End", the only ending with this note.

Using Sigma carries a gauge with it, which depletes as you probe their mind more and more. If it falls to zero, Ray Platiere will tell you that you basically destroyed their mind and you get a Game Over. "You're no telepath."

Every time you let a Silent infectee get away, intentionally or otherwise, the Hazard percentage at the corner of the map increases. If it reaches 100%, you get another call from Ray that says that it's too late, and there's nothing left to do for the city but send in The Tigers and destroy them all mentally to stop Silent spreading any further.

Failing to find Yayoi before too long when she goes missing will get you told that it's too late, and that she killed herself due to Silent's infection before you could save her.

Fallout and Fallout 2 both have a built-in time limit — if this is ever reached, a small cinematic with the words "THE END" plays and the game quits back to the title screen. It takes about thirteen years of game time though, so it's really no bother unless you're actively seeking it out.

Fallout 3 allows you to tell Colonel Autumn the activation code for the water purifier. He thanks you, then shoots you. Also, if you fail to activate the purifier in time, it explodes, terminating your game regardless of whether Broken Steel is installed, since without the purifier, the events of the epilogue can't take place, and the main characters are probably killed in the explosion anyways.

In the Fallout: New Vegas DLC Dead Money, if you agree to work with Elijah at the end, as opposed to killing him, the game ends and a cutscene explains how the Courier and Elijah spread the toxic cloud across the entirety of the Mojave, turning it into an uninhabitable wasteland. There's another one where examining a computer message specifically meant for Dean Domino in the Sierra Madre Vault will lock the Courier in there. After s/he eventually dies, a hologram of him/her is created.

The Fallout: New Vegas DLC Old World Blues had one, but it was cut from the final game. The Courier would have the option to surrender their brain to the Think Tanks and be helpless to stop them from performing their crazy experiments on the Mojave. Goodsprings is destroyed by falling blocks, the Jacobstown Super Mutants are driven mad by a satellite, Black Mountain is overrun by giant, man-eating mutant cows, and the Legion and NCR are brainwashed into thinking they're respectively living in ancient Rome (on the moon) and Pre-War America.

Fallout 4 will come to an abrupt end if, during the pre-war segment of the game at the very beginning, you take too long to get to the Vault and escape the nuclear explosion.

Choosing to suicide or shoot Forrest Kaysen over shooting Emily to end her suffering in Deadly Premonition results in York telling Zach he made the wrong choice, while showing a shriveled up Emily in the Red Room, and allowing the choice to try again.

While playing Vangers, at one point you may discover a special artifact Mechanical Messiah. It has a number of dangerous functions and is considered to be cursed. One of its functions is named Lucky: try to activate it and the fourth wall will be destroyed, with the game stating that you, the Vanger, have failed the test and will be utilized. This becomes understandable if you played the game before and know the ending(s).

In Saints Row IV, at one point you're are offered a choice to either keep fighting or take a deal with the aliens to save the world by dying. If you take the deal, you get a game over screen telling you that you shouldn't have trusted them.

In Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, during the mission "Stowaway", you can jump out the plane without a parachute, which leads into a cutscene showing CJ crashing into a parked car at a drive-in.

Early sandbox ZX Spectrum game Skool Daze normally ends the game when you have accrued 10,000 lines or more; however, there is a random event where you must avoid contact with another character who has contracted the mumps. Get touched and you contract the illness too, whereupon you are immediately sent home.

Examples in non-video game applications:

Card Games

Under some partners rules variants of Spades, getting a "Boston" run on your team (losing all thirteen tricks) is an automatic game loss.

In Magic: The Gathering, the standard loss condition occurs when your opponent brings your life total to zero. However, there are other ways to lose the game:

If you are forced to draw a card when there are no cards remaining in your library, you are "decked" and lose the game.

Creatures with the Infect ability, rather than dealing life damage to a player, inflicts that player with poison counters. A player with ten poison counters loses the game.

Certain cards cause you to win or lose in unusual circumstances; for instance, the Near-Death Experience card, which allows you to win if you have exactly 1 life remaining in your upkeep step.

In Munchkin players win when they reach the 10th level, but they must do it by defeating a monster - other ways to normally level up (such as selling items or using "go up a level" cards) aren't allowed. Except for the card "Divine Intervention" which makes every cleric go up a level, and explicitly states you can win the game this way.

The Star Trek Customizable Card Game (First Edition) by Decipher was normally won either by scoring 100 points before the opponent, or (more rarely) by having the higher score when both players' draw decks were depleted. A common "nonstandard" game ending involved a card called Writ of Accountability. If you exceeded any of the limits outlined by the card, and your opponent activated the card on you, you instantly lost the game, with a score of 0 (and if only one player remained—which nearly always was the case—that player scored the full 100 points needed to win). There were a few other cases where you could lose the game instantly (such as calling "Devidian Door", then being caught without a Devidian Door in hand when it came time to show it), but that was perhaps the best known.

The third book in the series, By Balloon to the Sahara, has a few: A Chilling End for when your character is trapped under an avalanche, The (BLAT!) End for when aliens disintegrate you with a laser gun, and even The Beginning, among several others.

The Mystery of Chimney Rock probably plays this trope the straightest:

One ending has you leaving the haunted house after encountering a ghostly creature who threatens you with his fate if you ever look back at the house.note Another equally bad ending implies he was a former inhabitant of the house who died after falling off the roof. If you don't like that ending, you can choose to look back one last time anyway, the resulting page of which simply has a bloodcurdling scream down the page in giant letters followed by a THUNK.

Another ending has your character accidentally breaking the resident witch's china cat and being cursed to pick up the pieces for all eternity, complete with There Is No End.

Pipe Down! in the Nintendo Adventure Books sees Mario and Luigi coming across a Clawgrip, to whom they must give an item to pass. If they do not have the required item or refuse to give it to him, they try to run. The Clawgrip gives chase, and they decide to distract him with a few coins. If you don't have enough, the resulting page is nothing but the word PINCH! in a huge explosion graphic that fills the entire page, along with the "GAME OVER".

From The Time Raider of the "Twistaplot" series: "Oh, no! You're stuck in a time warp! (turn to page -number-, quick!)" *flip* "Nothing warps the human brain faster than a time warp. (turn to page -number-)" *flip back* "Oh, no! You're stuck in a time warp! ..."

Game Shows

In game show parlance, the Non-Standard Game Over is, in its broadest sense, a form of Epic Fail, where a contestant performs so poorly that he is either disqualified or causes a situation where the winner's score makes it mathematically impossible for him/her to catch up. In several game shows, the game is ended early, the losing contestant is given his Consolation Prizes, and the winner plays the bonus game early.

A number of quiz shows from the late 1960s and early 1970s — including the Who, What or Where Game and the original Sale Of The Century — had rules where falling below zero at any time immediately eliminated that player from further play. These games spotted the players a small bankroll ($20 for $otC, $125 for the betting-type 3 Ws) and, like Jeopardy!, money was deducted for incorrect answers. But enough incorrect answers meant falling to or below $0 and, per the rules, meant they were eliminated immediately. The "$0 means goodbye" rule was eliminated for the more familiar 1983 $otC and the 3 Ws 1990 remake The Challengers. (With the earlier incarnations, the standard "game over" is at the end of the front game of $otC (we've just played the last question, here's the scores, here's our champion) or, on the 3 Ws, after the day's final category is played with all three contestants participating.

Blockbusters: The Bonus Round, called "Gold Rush" (or "Gold Run"), required players to make a side-to-side chain on a game board by answering questions within a 60-second time limit; an incorrect answer blocked the progress and required the contestant to work his/her way around. The trope kicked into effect for just the first few weeks of the series' run — if, because of enough wrong answers, there was no longer a way to make a side-to-side connection before the 60-second time limit expired, the game ended early. The trope no longer was in effect after the bonus round was tweaked; the contestant could still win consolation cash by continuing to answer questions until the time limit expired.

The Bonus Round on Body Language, a charades game show, was broken down into two parts. The first had a contestant guessing up to ten words at $100 per word in 60 seconds, followed by another 20-second round with three words played for 10 times the amount the contestant won previously. Giving an illegal clue (talking or using a prop) in the second part immediately ended the round in failure even if any words were left over; the bonus round was also not played if, by rare happenstance, the contestant failed to guess even one word in the first part.

On Card Sharks, the Money Cards Bonus Round automatically ended prior to the Big Bet card if, while on the second row, the contestant busted -– i.e., bet everything on an incorrect hunch. (On the NBC version, this was marked by a harsh buzzer followed by a truncated version of The Price is Rightlosing horns). Quite a few times, there were players who "two-card busted" (meaning they blew everything on the first card, then — with the card moved immediately to the second row and the player given a new bankroll — immediately lost everything on their next call of the cards). This was also originally possible if the next card was of the same value as the previous one; it was originally ruled as a loss, but on later episodes, the next card being of the same value resulted in neither a gain nor a loss (referred to in-show as a "push").

In its broadest sense, any player who has $0 or a negative cash score at the end of the "Double Jeopardy!" round ends his participation in the show early (i.e., he's not around for "Final Jeopardy!"). However, at least once on the original NBC series — the late 1960s, by most accounts — the trope truly kicked into full effect when all three players had negative cash scores and thus were ineligible for "Final Jeopardy!" No "Final Jeopardy!" was played that day, and Art Fleming spent the rest of the time talking with the contestants and the audience. The standard "game over" is with all three players participating in "Final Jeopardy!"

A twist on the "nonstandard game over" trope is the "lock game" scenario, where the leading contestant's score at the end of "Double Jeopardy!" is more than double that of the second-place contestant ... assuming, of course, he/she does not bet more than what he'd be left with if he were incorrect and the second-place player was correct and bet enough. In this case, a standard "game over" is a competitive game, where the second-place contestant can still win if certain things go right (e.g., a correct answer and a wise bet, vs. the champion being wrong and forced to bet enough to cover the second-place player's wager).

Match Game: The 1970s version's two-part Super Match — the Audience Match followed by the Head-to-Head Match — required the contestant to match at least one of the top three answers in the Audience Match portion of the game to play the Head-to-Head portion; failure to do so ended this bonus round early. While not uncommon during the CBS and daily syndicated run, only one time did it happen on Match Game PM (where two Audience Matches were played back-to-back prior to the Head-to-Head round), forcing a modified front-game question to be played in place of that show's Head-to-Head match; the contestant won. Averted with later versions: The 2016 ABC primetime version instead gives a Consolation Prize of $1,000 for the Head-to-Head round, which can be multiplied to $5,000; and when the show was married to The Hollywood Squares in 1983-1984, the contestant was given $100 and could turn it into up to $3,000.

Name That Tune: Most game shows' bonus rounds that were quiz-based allowed for incorrect answers; the game would still proceed and allow the contestant a chance to achieve the stated goal (guess 10 correct answers in 60 seconds to win). This game was one of the exceptions: With only seven songs to be guessed (in a 30-second time period), the contestant had to guess all seven songs correctly to win the day's top prize and be invited back to a grand prize tournament. This meant that even one wrong answer stops the game immediately and the player is left to take home consolation prizes. The standard game overs, then, come if the player guesses all seven songs or the time limit expires before all seven songs are guessed.

The Price Is Right: Several pricing games – those involving the pricing of groceries or small items – have this clause if the contestant is wrong with all questions or fails to meet any conditions on his/her given choices (usually three), and the contestant had to earn all picks. A few examples:

Bullseye: In this game involving pricing of groceries, the objective was to pick an item and tell how many was needed to – when multiplied by the price of the item – reach a target score of $10-12, which was an Instant-Win Condition. If the actual total wasn't within $10-12 but at least $2 and not more than $12, the contestant earned a mark on the board resembling an archery target, meaning they could still win if that item concealed a hidden bullseye; up to three turns were given. The trope kicks in, then, if the contestant fails to at least get one mark on the board – that is, he was below $2 or above $12 on every one of his three picks, meaning the hidden bullseye is out of play and cannot help; despite the instant early loss condition, the host often will still show the audience which grocery item had the hidden bullseye.

5 Price Tags: If the contestant is wrong on all four true-false pricing questions. At least one correct answer was needed to be able to pick from one of the price tags they thought was the correct price.

Master Key: If the contestant is wrong on both either-or pricing questions, meaning no pick of which one of the five keys. The contestant needed one or both correct answers to try to pick the right key and (attempt to) win at least something.

Rat Race: If the contestant is wrong on all three pricing questions, meaning no selection of the rats (although the rodents may run anyway just for fun). At least one was needed for the contestant to have a stake in the race.

Shell Game: If the contestant is wrong on all four higher-lower pricing questions, meaning no chips on the table; they had to have at least one correct to place a chip beside the shell they thought concealed the ball.

Bonus Game: Like Shell Game, if the contestant is wrong on all four higher-lower pricing questions, meaning they won't have control over any windows, including the Bonus window; they had to have at least one correct to have a chance of controlling the Bonus window.

Punch-A-Bunch (also known as the Punchboard): If the contestant is wrong on all four higher-lower pricing questions, meaning no punches to use on the board; at least one was needed to punch a hole and win something.

Secret X: If the contestant is wrong on both small item prices, meaning no extra Xs to go with the first one they receive, at least 2 Xs are needed to be able to make a tic-tac-toe with the Secret X in the middle column.

One Away: If the contestant is wrong on all five (previously four) numbers the first time; note This rule exists because if the contestant gets all five numbers wrong, then it would become clear that the 5 numbers the contestant didn't flip to were the correct ones, meaning changing to the other numbers would reveal the correct price. This scenario only happened once, in 1989, with the audience and Bob jeering the contestant for it one correct number was necessary to attempt a second try. A nonstandard win occurs if the contestant gets all five numbers right on the first try.

Originally the case with Pass The Buck on its first three or four playings, where three pairs of grocery items were used and no free pick was given, meaning a Non-Standard Game Over for the contestant if they were wrong on all three pairs, since it would result in no picks on the board. This was changed afterward to give the contestant a free pick, as well as reduce the pairs from three to two and the board spaces from eight to six (losing $2,000 and leaving two Lose Everythings instead of three.)

Retired Games:

Hit Me: A la Blackjack, if the contestant picked grocery items with cards that brought their score to 22 or higher, meaning THEY bust and forfeit the game regardless of the house's score.

Joker: If the contestant was wrong on all four small prizes, meaning they can't discard any cards, including the target Joker; at least one was needed for the contestant to have a chance of discarding the Joker, which was the goal of the game.

Super Ball! If the contestant was wrong on all four balls (the last of which was the Super Ball), meaning they had no balls to play the skee ball game with; at least one was needed to play and win.

Telephone Gamenote A rare game that was only played a few times, and had the misfortune of mostly appearing on episodes with fur coat prizes; these episodes were excluded from being rerun when then-host Bob Barker became a vegetarian and began his pet population campaign : A one time form of the trope; if the contestant spent more that 90 cents of the dollar they were provided in the pricing round of this game, meaning they didn't have enough money to make a call in the second round; at least 10 cents (a dime) was required to make a phone call in the second round for the contestant to win.

In the front game, after the first four categories are played, the fifth category is selected by the team that is trailing. If, after that fifth category, the team's score is still behind that of their opponents, the game is automatically ended (unless the remaining box is the 7/11 or Mystery 7, thus allowing for at least a chance at it). More than once, because the trailing team was behind by more than eight points (categories only have seven words, meaning a maximum of seven points possible per round), the game was ended after the fourth category. The standard game over, then, comes with the sixth category (either the winning team scores enough points to win, or if the trailing team is still behind when time expires). Theoretically, the earliest a Pyramid front game could end is during the playing of the first word of the fourth category; that is, the losing team is trailing 14-0 and they immediately get disqualified on the first word. Not enough words would be available to help the trailing team at least tie.

This could also happen in the Winner's Circle. If all six subjects are guessed in 60 seconds or less, the contestant wins the large bonus. Giving an illegal clue on a category puts it out of play and the contestant forfeits the chance at the jackpot. However, if any categories are left, play continues until the rest are guessed or time runs out. If the former happens, the Winner's Circle just ends with no music and no flashing board indicating a bonus round win. You just see the lights come back on and the host explaining what went wrong. In this case, the standard game over is either getting all six in 60 seconds or time running out.

Password Plus and Super Password have an end game example similar to the above. The bonus round consists of ten passwords which must be communicated in order to win a large bonus. The standard game over is guessing all ten in 60 seconds or time running out. An illegal clue or accidentally reading a password or part of a password would put the password out of play and end the chance for the contestant to win the large bonus. If any passwords are left, the end game continues until the remaining are guessed or time runs out. In the case of the former, the round ends early with no celebration.

For Super Password'sCashword, giving an illegal clue ended the segment in a loss right away, regardless of how many chances the contestants have left (up to 3). This happened at least twice.

Trashed featured a Pyramid-esque bonus round in which each of the two contestants had to guess the artists in three separate music videos via clues given by his or her teammate. Giving an illegal clue (such as a part of the artist or band's name, the title of the song, etc.) eliminated that video from play and forfeited the chance to win the grand prize.

Good News Week: Several episodes of the Australian current-affairs comedy have ended with both teams losing to the studio audience. On one particularly memorable occasion during the show's original 90's run, the show was won by host/scorer/umpire Paul McDermott.

The Weakest Link has been known to do this a few times; while there is no unusual way to lose the game other than being voted off or losing the final round, contestants occasionally show such a lack of intelligence that Anne sends them off without even saying "You are the Weakest Link, goodbye!"

The series had this happen twice in the Bonus Round during Season 1. At the time, the round consisted of guessing a string of five-letter words in two minutes with the first letter and another random letter revealed, with a ball awarded for each correct word. After time expired, the team was given a Bingo board with 13 of the 25 spots already covered in such a way that a 5-in-a-row could be achieved in as few as two draws, and the grand prize was won for completing said 5-in-a-row "Lingo" at any time; a standard game over was either winning the prize package, or running out of balls and receiving a consolation prize. However, one team in Season 1 won only one ball (which was drawn anyway even though it was useless) and another somehow failed to guess any words in the two minutes, note It doesn't help that their last word was "Kazoo" with the K & A showing, and they first misspelled "Khaki" as "Kahki", and followed that with Chuck's favorite, "Kazaa". Since these spellings resulted in fake words, no help regarding the letters was provided, and they ran out of time on the third chance. thus winning zero balls and zero dollars; they left with the same consolation prizes that the losing team in the main game won, and the Bonus Lingo board didn't even appear.

Another example came after the tweaking began in Season 2. From that point onward, the teams were now given a few "bonus letters" that they could add to the words at any time if they got stuck; also, the board had only 12 spots covered, but a Lingo could now be made in only one draw, with a larger prize (either a trip or a Progressive Jackpot) for completing the Lingo in only one draw, and a smaller prize for doing it in two or more draws. A standard game over was still the consolation prize for failing to complete a Lingo before all the earned balls were used up. The non-standard came when a team who won 7 balls failed to make a Lingo in all 7 draws; host Chuck Woolery, incredulous over what just happened, reached into the hopper himself to draw another ball and, against 99.9% odds, drew the only number that still didn't make a Lingo.

In both scenarios, there's a non-standard win condition, which is in play if a team is able to win 10 balls; this is the max amount of pulls allowed and the spelling game ends immediately if it happens. While this allegedly guarantees $1,000, it actually guaranteed the $5,000 standard bonus prize because the team will have enough picks to eventually get a Lingo regardless of what order the balls are drawn.

Sports

The penalty shootout occurs in many sports games, where the players or teams are tied after a certain amount of regulation play, getting alternate turns shooting or trying to score from a set situation and the team who scores the most wins.

The most widely known example is in Association Football, where teams get a number of shots from the penalty spot with the team who score the most winning. 5 kicks is the standard practice. If tied they keep going until one team misses while the other scores. Field Hockey shares the same style of shootout.

Ice Hockey has a form where one player takes the puck from the halfway line, skates towards the goal and has to try and score in a one-one one with the goalkeeper. The North American Soccer League introduced a variation of penalty kicks that took inspiration from Ice Hockey, where the player would start 25 yards away from the goal and have to dribble towards the penalty box and shoot past the keeper. The majority of these attempts failed due to the strict time 5 second shot clock which stopped players from getting anywhere past the start of the penalty box and thus a long way from goal.

At the high school level and below — and in some cases, the collegiate level and some non-major league level sports leagues — there is a "mercy rule," which serves to either end a game after a prescribed point in the game or kick into effect a rule that hastens the end of the game once the winning team's margin reaches a defined point. This is as opposed to playing out a one-sided game to its natural conclusion under normal rules. Common applications:

Baseball and softball:

Virtually all state high school associations have rules which end games after a prescribed lead after a certain number of innings have been played. In both sports, the rule is usually 10 runs after five innings; it differs by sport if the winning team builds a larger lead even earlier; for instance, in baseball, the common rule is 15 runs after four innings, while in softball teams need only to have a 12-run lead after three innings. College contests have variations of this rule, but since baseball games at this level sometimes go the full nine innings, the 10-run rule doesn't usually kick in until the seventh inning. Softball rules are typically similar to high school's "10 after five" rule.

Child-based and junior high level baseball and softball, and some semi-professional leagues often have variations of the "mercy rule." For instance, a townball league for children may even have a rule where a team that builds a huge lead — say, 30-0 — after just one inning is no longer is allowed to bat, and the trailing team is given more than the standard three outs (usually six, or if they are the home team and haven't batted yet, nine) to give everyone at least one at-bat, with the game continuing only if in the game manager's judgement the losing team has sufficiently caught up.

Football:

Most states have a "continuous clock" rule, which means that if a team has a certain lead after halftime (it varies from 35-50 points), the clock runs continuously, not stopping on plays where the clock normally would be stopped, such as an incomplete pass or a play going out of bounds (although the clock does stop for quarter breaks, time outs, and any scoring). The clock continues to run in these games until the scoring difference falls below the prescribed margin (normal timing rules once again take effect), but then kick back in if the winning team once again exceeds the margin.

Prior to the advent of "continuous clock" rules, some states had rules whereby the game would end at halftime or any time after if the winning team has a certain lead (usually, 50 points or more). In Kansas, an eight-man football game (or six-man game in Texas) stops once a team gets a lead of at least 45 points by halftime or at any point after that (The entire first half must be played out). This rule came into effect during the 1980s, when some games featured mismatches so great, the winning team was easily scoring 90 or, on some rare occasions, 100 points.

In the NFL, most overtime games end with a field goal or touchdown, but on three occasions, they have ended in a safety (a defensive play where the defense stops the offense inside their own end zone).

Basketball: Much like football, state high school athletic associations have implemented "continuous clock" timing rules if the winning team is ahead by a certain margin (usually 30 points) after halftime. There are currently no known states that end a game before the end of the fourth quarter if an even higher point difference is reached.

Soccer:

Many states have rules where a team would automatically be declared the winner and the game ended if ahead by a certain number of goals at halftime or any time after. Usually, this difference is 10 goals. Additionally, a few states have provisions limiting the number of red cards a team can receive during the season before being disqualified from post-season competition. In a game situation, the trope kicks into effect if the disqualifying red card is given to a team, automatically – upon verification that indeed the "red card" limit has been surpassed – ending the game and awarding the game to the other team by default.

In Canada, the Gloucester Dragons league briefly had a reverse mercy rule, in which a blowout by more than five goals counted as a loss for the winning team. This got such bad press that the league reversed course within two weeks, adopting a standard eight-goal mercy rule. The reverse rule had actually been directed at coaches, some of whom had been letting their teams run roughshod over weaker ones, but it sent a pretty dubious message to everyone else — not to mention the obvious potential for abuse (score six own goals to win!).

The NCAA (particularly in football and basketball) and professional leagues such as the NBA, NFL and Major League Baseball do not have mercy rules, meaning they could score an unlimited number of points, runs, etc., without having special rules kick into effect to hasten the end of the game. Meaning unfortunate teams on the losing end would have no choice but to continue playing and trying to reduce the margin. (Which is not very fun for the loser.) That said, a continuous clock was used on at least three occasions in NCAA Division I football games, where the winning team ran up a large lead by halftime and agreed to a continuous clock for the entire second half; the winning team in all cases at least maintained the lead, with two of them increasing the lead. Aside from that, teams that have a very large lead over their opponents, especially a decidedly weaker one, will typically play reserves, run plays designed to take time off the clock (such as in football, run the ball up the middle and rarely if ever pass), use pinch hitters (in baseball, said roles going to non-starters and/or reserves) with low batting averages, or shoot the ball conservatively (in basketball).

Boxing: At all levels, a boxer can be knocked down only so many times before he will be declared the loser by TKO — that is, a "technical knockout." It is also an automatic "game over" — that is, match over — if one boxer fails to answer a 10 count (that is, sufficiently get up in the referee's judgement) to continue the match. At some levels (though rarely at high-level bouts, since it rarely happens), the match automatically ends if a boxer is knocked down three times in a round.

In the "8-Ball" variant of pocket billards, you win if you legally sink the 8-ball (no other balls of your pattern remaining, calling the pocket you're going to sink the 8-ball in and then legally sinking the 8-ball there) before your opponent does. However, it is possible to lose on your turn instead, in the following ways:

Sinking the 8-ball when you haven't sunk every ball of your pattern yet.

When you are allowed to sink the 8-ball:

Sinking the 8-ball in a pocket you did not call.

Sinking the 8-ball in the correct pocket, but making a foul in the process (e.g. a scratch, hitting an opponent's ball first).note Note that if you foul up, but don't sink the 8, the usual foul rules apply instead of an instant loss.

In Association Football, apart from the usual results of a win or draw over 90 minutes, or the 120 minutes of extra time, there are a handful of other ways to win or lose a game.

In a two match tie (used in knock-out competitions), the away goals rule, if the aggregate score is tied, then whoever scored the most goals in their match away from home wins.

Most leagues have a statue in the laws that says when a team cannot field a certain number of players, (most often a team being down to 6 from a team of 11), the game is abandoned, although depending on the score or the laws of the league the game can still be awarded to the team with enough players.

One example of this was titled the Battle Of Bramall Lane, where Sheffield United had their goalkeeper sent off in the 9th minute, followed by two players who had been substituted onto the pitch being involved in a scuffle with the opposition that resulted in both being sent off only minutes after coming on. This left them with 8 players. They went down to 7 players when one was injured in the 79th minute minutes right after their opposition took a 3-0 lead, followed by another player going off hurt in the 83rd. Reduced to 6 players, the referee abandoned the match, which was subsequently awarded to West Bromwich Albion.

Numerous sports have what is termed "Sudden Death", "Golden Goal" or "Golden Point" where after a draw, the game continues to be played in extra time, with the first team to score a point of any kind is immediately the winner. It was introduced for Association Football in 1993 but removed by 2004.

A bizarre variation of the Golden Goal rule as part of the 1994 Caribbean Cup Qualification football tournament was that any goal scored in Golden Goal extra time counted as double for the league ladder in addition to winning the match itself. The final match for Barbados required them to defeat Grenada by 2 goals to qualify in first place and go through to the tournament itself. Barbados were winning the match 2-1, but were unable to score a goal to make the game 3-1. They decided to score an own goal which would tie the match and send it to extra time, hopefully allowing them to score a golden goal, worth double, to finish first. With only a handful of minutes left, the Grenada players cottoned onto the plan, and realised that they would finish first if they could score a goal at either end of the field. This resulted in Barbados defending both ends of the field and they succeeded in bringing the game to extra time and then scored a winning golden goal, winning the match 4-2 (despite only scoring 3 goals), and then qualifying in first place.

Another development across word sports was the "Silver Goal" (although other sports use different terminology). It is a variation of Golden Goal where the instant win condition of scoring any point in extra time is removed to allow the opposition team a certain amount of time or plays to equal or better the opposition. In Association Football this Silver Goal period was one half of extra time. When used in American Football, the team who have been scored on get one drive to match or better their opposition result, which can lead to a team scoring a field goal, then losing because their opposition scored a touchdown.

In Sumo Wrestling, if a wrestler's loin cloth falls off, they lose instantly. For obvious reasons, this infraction is extremely rare.

Cricket test matches has 3 standard endings after the 5 days of play, with 2 innings per team, comes to a close: A team may either win, lose, or drawnote aka. No result was reached at the end of the match the match. The non-standard ending is the tie, where the scores are exactly level once the team batting fourth and last has lost all of their batsmen. This has only happened twice in more than 2100 test matches. Should not be confused with the scores being level as the allotted time runs out, in which case it's a "We flippin' murdered 'em"-draw.

Tabletop Games

Chess: Resigning before you're put into checkmate. Often symbolized by deliberately knocking over your own king's piece, though this is not required. Both players may also choose to agree to a draw if they realize that neither of them can reasonably checkmate the other.

Any tabletop RPG set in more modern times can have a non-standard game over in probably the most mundane way possible: Your character gets arrested. This is more likely in settings where the Player Characters are just normal humans, and can be especially prominent when they are fighting any Eldritch Abomination that looks (or turns back into a) human after its dead. You may have been fighting to save the world, but to the police a corpse is a corpse after all, and while your character might get out on bail, or have their case thrown out due to lack of evidence, for all practical purposes you are out of the game for at least a little while until your bail hearing, the case has been to court etc. Hunter: The Vigil specifically mentions this as a danger hunters of any level face, and games like Call of Cthulhu which feature the players fighting wholly mortal servants of some monster often at least imply this.

Seeing as it is based on comic books, Sentinels of the Multiverse features a few ways to cause the players to get a Non-Standard Game Over (the standard way of winning is to reduce the Villain to 0 HP)

Evil Alien Overlord Grand Warlord Voss takes over the Earth if he has 10 or more Minions in play at the start of his turn.

The Dreamer turns the Standard win condition listed above into the lose condition in battles against her: If she dies, the heroes lose. Justified, for two reasons: 1) The Dreamer is the child version of the hero Visionary, who time traveled to the present to save her younger self from a government project, so if Dreamer dies, Visionary dies. 2) the Dreamer's psychic powers overloaded during a nightmare and the nightmares themselves but be destroyed to wake her up. In short, the battle is one big Hostage Situation.

This is Inverted with Gloomweaver. If the heroes manage to get all three of his Relicsnote The Pouch of Bones, the Drum of Despair, and the Grimore of Curses into his trash before he can flip, the heroes succeed in preventing his summoning to Earth, and Gloomweaver automatically loses.

The environments also have Non-Standard Game Overs occasionally. The most prominent is the Self Destruct Sequence in the Wager Mars Base. If the Sequence completes itself, the base blows up and everyone dies.

Silver Gulch, 1993, has Lost In the Past. If there are no cards in the Environment's trash by the end of it's turn, the time portal the heroes used to get to Silver Gulch closes and thus, the heroes lose.

The Mobile Defense Platform has the Propulsion Systems. If it loses all of it's 10 HP, the Platform blows up and everyone dies. Note that it can be removed or destroyed in other ways without invoking the everyone dying part.

As of the last couple of editions of Warhammer 40,000, if a game turn ends with one player having no models at all on the board, they are "tabled" and immediately lose. Doesn't matter if they have enough Victory Points in the bag to wipe the floor with their opponent, or if they have their entire army in reserve ready to drop in at the start of the next turn - if you get tabled, you lose everything.

Fluxx has Goal cards — if someone meets the conditions on an active Goal card, they win. It also has Ungoals — if the conditions on an active Ungoal card are met, everyone loses.

The Game of Life - in the classic (1960-1990) version, if you didn't think you had enough money to win the game outright by having the most money at retirement, you could attempt to become a "Millionaire Tycoon" by calling one number on the wheel and spinning. Landing on that number resulted in an Instant-Win Condition (and thus a NSGO for your opponents); any other number resulted in the loss of everything you owned and your banishment to the Bankrupt space (thus a NSGO for yourself).

In the dice game Pass the Pigs (which uses special pig-shaped dice), if you somehow manage to roll the dice so that one pig is standing upright on the ground, and the other is standing upright on the first pig's back (a virtually impossible feat), you instantly lose the game.

The standard Chrononauts has this occur if there are thirteen temporal paradoxes on the field at one time. An expansion included a character who actually had a temporal paradox as his own win condition.

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